Or at least, the vast majority of published reviews are.
Recently, I was reading a review of Samuel Beckett [Nobel Prize in Literature 1969], from the NYTimes from 1958 [0], and at first I was shocked by how much higher the quality was than what one might read in the Times today.
Turns out that the author was a Stephen Spender, CBE, [1], a poet who was knighted for his contributions. It's not when or where something is written so much as by whom. You are exactly right that it's determined by who the critic is.
