Microsoft learns to bribe and twist
There are lies, damned lies and then there is the nonsense about the free laptops Microsoft gave away to bloggers.
One damned lie is that Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices gave away expensive laptops to selected bloggers to solicit ‘valuable feedback’.
Total nonsense.
Microsoft gave away those laptops in order to keep those bloggers on side.
There is nothing new in this. There is no IT journalist I have ever met – and I have met thousands – who has not taken a freebie and then kept a totally unbiased editorial stance. It simply does not happen.
A quick test.
Hands up the journalists who have paid for all of the software on their computer. Hands up the journalists who have coffee mugs at home that does not have the decal of a computer company. Hands up the journalist who has ever bought a t-shirt. Hands up the journalists who have been flown to a press conference in cattle class.
Quite so.
Hillarie Belloc wrote:
One cannot hope to bribe or twist -
Thank God – the British Journalist,
But seeing what the man will do
Un-bribed, there’s no occasion to.
For British read international although that stuffs up the scansion.
The next big lie is that freebies do not influence stories.
Sure they do. I was once a travel editor and, in discussions with other journalists, found we could all write rave reviews of places to which we would not send our mothers. Or would, depending on familial relationships.
Canon, a most splendid company, does not keep its excellent relationships with the press by charging full price for its gear or insisting on short tests and then the immediate return of the equipment.
Sony was not savaged by the press just because it suddenly seemed to be getting everything wrong. There was a lot of keen pleasure in getting at Sony because its PR attitude is that it is positively doing the press a major favor in allowing them to test a machine for five days.
There is a lot of Pecksniffian hypocrisy involved in the stories being published aboit this.
San Francisco blogger Scott Beale said he would sell the laptop on eBay and donate the proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Hoorah. An honest journo. But perhaps you can get more mileage out of sending it back than keeping it.
If I sound cynical it is because thirty years of reporting has made me that way.
The worst – or best depending on your point of view – in bribing journalists is the auto industry where it is an advanced art form. Then comes travel. Then comes computers.
Let us not make any bones about it. What they are doing is bribing the press. And the press – and most bloggers – are quite happy to lie back and enjoy it. What annoys me is that I did not get one.
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