quality:corruption, structural:scholar_edition, structural:summarization
Accusations of commercialism

Due to the positive exposure and prestige of the Academy Awards, many studios spend around 25 million dollars and hire publicists specifically to promote their films during what is typically called the " Oscar season ". This has generated accusations of the Academy Awards being influenced more by marketing and lobbying than by quality. William Friedkin, an Academy Award–winning film director and former producer of the ceremony, expressed this sentiment at a conference in New York in 2009, describing it as "the greatest promotion scheme that any industry ever devised for itself".

Tim Dirks, editor of AMC 's Filmsite, has written of the Academy Awards:

Unfortunately, the critical worth, artistic vision, cultural influence and innovative qualities of many films are not given the same voting weight. Especially since the 1980s, moneymaking "formula-made" blockbusters with glossy production values have often been crowd-pleasing titans (and Best Picture winners), but they haven't necessarily been great films with depth or critical acclaim by any measure.

A recent technique that has been claimed to be used during the Oscar season is the whisper campaign. These campaigns are intended to spread negative perceptions of other movies nominated and are believed to be perpetrated by those who were involved in creating the movie. Examples of whisper campaigns include the allegations against Zero Dark Thirty suggesting that it justifies torture and the claim that Lincoln distorts history.