[Corp. Watch] 'Embedded media' coverage of Apple is typical of fawning corporate press

[Corporation Watch]

Rotten Reporting
  The media's coverage of Apple bites -- here's why

By Daniel Lyons

(Newsweek, Jan. 16) -- For the past six months Apple CEO Steve Jobs  
has been looking terribly ill. But only this week did Apple finally  
acknowledge that Jobs isn't doing well, when the company announced  
that Jobs would take a leave for six months.

	Some suggest the company has misled investors -- shareholder lawsuits  
seem likely. But how did the company manage to carry on this charade  
for so long? The sad fact is they had help from the media.
	The worst thing about the coverage of the Jobs health fiasco is not  
only that much of the media failed to pursue the story. A lot of us  
feel uneasy about prying into someone's health. We'd just rather not  
go there.

	But in this case the media went beyond just ignoring the story and  
actually helped Apple tamp down the story, which kept bubbling up,  
usually on blogs.

	On Wednesday night I went on CNBC and was obnoxious enough to point  
out, on the air, that CNBC itself had been put into the latter camp by  
a Silicon Valley bureau chief [Jim Goldman], who had appointed himself  
the official defender of Steve Jobs and Apple.

	Worse yet, in December, when one blog in the Valley reported that  
Jobs had canceled his annual Macworld keynote because "Steve's health  
is rapidly declining," [Goldman] went out of his way to attack that  
outlet and refute its report, both on air and in print.

	[Goldman] claimed he had sources deep inside Apple who were telling  
him that Jobs was healthy. "Apple's Jobs is (Still) Fine," was his  
headline on the CNBC website.

	Turns out, however, that the blog -- a gadget site called Gizmodo --  
was right, and [Goldman] was wrong. When I was on air, I pointed this  
out, and suggested that [Goldman] should apologize to Gizmodo, and  
also to his viewers for having misled them.

	For this I've now become persona non grata at CNBC. From what I was  
told after the show, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever be invited  
back.  (For what it's worth, after the show I apologized to Goldman  
and others at CNBC for being so rude. And the next day, a CNBC  
spokesman said that I have not been "banned" from the network.)

	The larger takeaway is what this episode says about how the media  
covers Apple. It's one thing for PR flacks to tell lies. That is,  
after all, what they get paid to do. But it's another thing for the  
media to join in on the action.

	The fact is, in the eyes of the media, Apple is the corporate  
equivalent of Barack Obama -- a company that can do no wrong. Even in  
Silicon Valley, where much of the press corps are pretty much  
glorified cheerleaders (think of all those slobbering cover stories  
about the Google guys) Apple's kid-gloves treatment stands out.

	Reporters don't just overlook Apple's faults; they'll actually  
apologize for them, or rationalize them away. Ever seen reporters  
clapping and cheering at a press conference? Happens all the time at  
Apple events.

	Jobs is famous for what Apple watchers call his "reality distortion  
field" -- that is, his ability to convince people that the world is  
one way when it's really another. The last six months have been the  
most outrageous example of the reality distortion field I've ever seen.

	Anyone with half a brain and pair of eyes could look at Steve Jobs  
last June and know that this was not a healthy 53-year-old man. Yet  
for months Apple fanboys and Apple's friends in the media have bent  
themselves into pretzels in search of ways to argue that he's in fine  
health.

	Now Apple finally has copped to the truth. Jobs is taking a leave of  
absence related to his health. This news came only nine days after  
Jobs put out a ridiculous open letter claiming he has a "hormone  
imbalance" that would be easily treated.

	One of the CNBC talking heads asked me whether this rather abrupt  
about-face will hurt Apple's credibility. I pointed out that to me and  
some of my peers, Apple has never had very much credibility. This is a  
company whose idea of "corporate communications" mostly involves  
picking up the phone and saying "No comment."

	Or sometimes they'll pick up the phone and just repeat the same  
meaningless sentence, over and over again, no matter what question you  
ask them. I'm not kidding. They really do that. And of course a lot of  
the time they just don't return phone calls at all.

	Apple's entire corporate culture is built on secrecy, and I mean  
crazy, CIA-style secrecy, where different teams of engineers who are  
working on the same project aren't allowed to know what the other  
teams are doing.

	Apple is also pretty good at spreading disinformation and freezing  
out people they don't like. Imagine what it might be like if the  
Church of Scientology went into the consumer electronics business, and  
you'd have a pretty good picture of how Apple operates.

	But some of my colleagues in the media have made a Faustian bargain  
with Apple. In exchange for super-special access to Jobs, they tacitly  
agree not to criticize the company or even to say things it doesn't  
like.

	It's one of those deals that seems great at first -- "Hey, I just got  
an exclusive with Steve Jobs!" -- but eventually it turns out to be  
rotten. For one thing, the access isn't worth much, since all you get  
is lame, scripted, well-rehearsed comments. Essentially you get turned  
into an extension of Apple's PR operation.

	And while it's nice to get a peek behind the curtain, and exciting to  
feel like you've been allowed into the "cool kids club," the truth is  
that the cool kids who are pretending to be your friends are actually  
just using you to spread whatever disinformation they happen to need  
spread that week. You are, to them, nothing more than a useful idiot.

	And when the you-know-what hits the fan, as it eventually must --  
when, say, Apple finally admits the truth about Steve Jobs being sick,  
which was obvious and evident for months -- all those wonderful  
"sources" and PR pals just slip away into no-comment land, leaving  
their sycophantic media dupes to take the fall for Apple's dissembling.

	That's what happened to [Goldman] at CNBC. Sure, he got his share of  
"exclusive" 10-minute spots with Steve Jobs. You can find them on  
YouTube. They look like training videos for a correspondence course on  
bootlicking.

	Now, of course, [Goldman] says he's outraged. He sputters about how  
Apple has been irresponsible and "deplorable." His pals at Apple won't  
care. They're already moving on to the next useful idiot. Among the  
Silicon Valley press corps there is no shortage of them.