Apple spanks New York Times over China reporting
And, pathetic squeals of indignation result. Apple has announced a major Mac operating system upgrade, OS X Mountain Lion, and The New York Times wasn’t invited to the prerelease briefings, a major snub for the paper of record which has received privileged access to products and executives for years.
The iOS-ification of the Mac will gain new momentum when OS X Mountain Lion ships in late Summer — the interwebs are chock full of reviews and reporting, New York Times included.
However, the paper was not included when Phil Schiller and other Apple executives gave one-on-one prerelease briefings to the usual coterie of favored journalists. The salt in the wound? Daring Fireball’s John Gruber got his preview figuratively “just up the street” from the Times.
A finger in their eye? The Wall Street Journal not only got the briefing, but also an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
The rub? The New York Times now widely discredited reporting on working conditions at factories in China where Apple products are made.
CEO Tim Cook publicly took exception with that series of reports and now the other shoe has dropped — New York Times has been publicly spanked.
Well, if you say that I beat, abuse or otherwise maltreat employees, then you really shouldn’t be at all surprised when you don’t get invited to my party…
What’s your take?
February 17th, 2012
Agreed.
On the other hand, I expect a journalistic endeavor–such as the New York Times–to not soft-pedal stories about any company for fear of upsetting CEOs. So I have more respect for the New York Times for publishing these stories regardless of whether or not they curry Apple’s favor or not. That’s what I expect from a newspaper.
Conversely, that’s not what I expect from corporate mouthpieces such as John Gruber, who is basically crowing about the fact that he sucks up to Apple so that he can see the new stuff before everybody else. That’s not journalism to me.
February 18th, 2012
I’m so goddamn sick of all your empty head stares
I’m not one of those racist fools, but you don’t really care
You only see what you want because your heads so full lies
Just believe the media hype and all it implies
Not (yellow) journalism to me…
February 18th, 2012
About damn time. These agencies and institutions have held themselves morally superior to the “rest” of the human race for long enough.
Glad SOMEONE had the spine and indignation to act. I’ve never bought a single Apple product aside from 1 Iphone, but I’m seriusly considering going half, if not full, Apple products next upgrade season, -JUST- based on this.
An act of pride, and for once, pride is not a thing to apologize for.