That's because game reviews mostly don't even want it to be fair, I mean really, you people are thinking of "reviewing" all wrong.
I know a blog owner that makes money reviewing a certain chain of products (it isn't games, nothing that exciting) at the behest of a company because they give him some money per month to put out (X) articles featuring their product. Apparently, he earns his keep.
It isn't necessarily exactly the same with games journalism (though I wouldn't be surprised in some cases), but I imagine favors for favors occurs fairly regularly, at the very least.
People who are honest only get what they earn through fandom, but people can be greedy and gain a fandom and be completely insane shitheads apparently. So why would they care about fair?
Devs? Well... I'm sure some small time devs approach outlets or try to make friends with journalists to get their time in the spotlight, and in some cases I can hardly blame them. When you've sunk a lot of time and energy into a product and you want to see it succeed, you're sort of blinded by it. It's the same with all sorts of other software initiatives, it isn't confined to games. Hell it isn't even confined to software, you know a lot of these startup invention articles got there somehow, some of the time.
Sometimes it's just word of mouth, sometimes it's not.
As for big publishers? They have PR and relations people for that, it's just done on multiple fronts and they have a lot more contacts. That's another aspect of it, and why indie devs are grasping on to whatever they can. Why does shit game of the year by a popular publisher get a review, and news, and hype when a legitimately better game won't even touch the front page of any popular online news source let alone printed paper?
I'm not excusing it, but to understand these people to fix what is wrong with the industry you have to put yourselves in their place (some of them, there's plenty of devs who thrive off of drama and assholishness, mostly who hit the front page here, putting yourself in their shoes feels downright awful and makes you lose faith in humanity).
The entire journalism industry is sleazy, and not just games or tech but everything you know, it is all sleazy as shit. To fix that issue it has to be a huge deal and there has to be huge consequences for impropriety. Which is why I'm glad you guys go after advertising, but I fear that won't be enough for every instance to be rectified. I'm not really sure what the next move is myself, but anything that causes journos to recoil when met with impropriety is great.