Criticism of Major News Outlets & Apple Event Reports
An Apple event has just concluded and the most frustrating aspect of this usually fascinating occurrence in the IT industry is the Australian media's reporting of it. Why do I care? Well the stuff below is what most Australians use to form an opinion on the iPhone, so what they write is important in terms of the general population's technology education and expectations. Plus as someone who knows a fair bit about the topic at hand, it's frustrating to see bullshit spread far and wide. It's no different to how a doctor might react to some story about the latest medical breakthrough. Irrational infuriation. I should just ignore it, but I can't let this slide without giving an opinion.
I purposely didn't include dedicated IT websites (Gizmodo, IT News, ZD Net, Delimiter, etc.) as they have their own brand of stupid, which is particularly jarring as they should know better. Read on to enjoy the antics of our revered tech news journalists. Whatever you do, *do not* read the comments on these sites if you value your sanity. The level of stupidity there is off the charts.
News Corp/News.com.au/Herald Sun
Jen Dudley weighs in with "REBOOT: Apple's new iPhone fails expectations" - another loaded headline, giving a summary of the event and flippantly comparing the iPhone to the competition: Samsung Galaxy S II - a clone of the iPhone, but running Android and the HTC EVO 3D, which the must-have 3D camera. Oh, and of course, the obligatory mention of Apple shares dropping after the announcement. Which happens every announcement, then rallies within a week to an all-time high. Waste of space.
Unrelated to the launch, but written just in time to stir the pot and generate page views for News Corp is Rosemarie Lentini's piece about "Apple's iTunes 'gouging' Australians", spun upon an opportunistic NSW State Fair Trading Minister giving his utterly vote grabbing opinion. Absolutely no mention of the fact that iTunes content pricing is dictated by the content owner, not by Apple. Yawn. Gutter trash.
Regurgitating stuff from the AFP - New iPhone: Fans after complete revamp disappointed - nothing blatantly offensive within. Just the headline (which NineMSN would have come up with) pre-emptively sets the tone, without any actual mention in the article from Apple fans. Shit stirring.
The Australian didn't bother with a journalist either, cobbling something together from AP, NewsCore and WSJ. The headline is sensible - Apple unveils the iPhone 4S at event at Cupertino - which is what happened and is accurate. The article itself is just a recount of what happened and the stats Apple gave out. The best piece about the event I reckon. No judgements, no hyperbole, no attempt to stir the pot simply to get pageviews or comments - just facts.
They also link to some opinion from an analyst in a piece from Chris Griffin, with some common sense, stating that the iPhone 4S won't be a big massive smash, but will still make Apple fuckloads of money and let them continue to lead their market. Chris also has another piece stating that the iPhone 4S doesn't work on 4G networks (duh). I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, as the level of understanding regarding wireless networks is stupendously low considering how heavily we rely on them. Not a bad job from The Australian. The least shit coverage for sure.
The ABC take the AFP route too. All that's been added is a paragraph at the start, stating that the iPhone 4S isn't the model we expected and the share price dropped. Aww. The really crappy thing is that on the ABC's front page, it has a headline of "iFlop?" giving the notion that the iPhone 4S has already failed, despite not being released yet. But when you visit the article, the headline changes again, to: "Apple unveils faster iPhone, share price falls" The first part is right, the 2nd part, whilst correct, is misleading. Like I said before, every time there's an announcement, the market reacts like this, only to have Apple shares worth more in a few days. A slight drop in share price is hardly worth mentioning. The reaction of some financial dorks should not be taken into consideration when judging the quality or user reaction to a product. If there was say, a 10% or 15% decrease, that's maybe worth something, but 4% is a blip as far as this stuff goes.
Been Woodhead focusses on the financial impact of the launch, as that's the AFR's prerogative. What perplexed me was the decision to dedicate a large chunk of the story to tweets from random, unimportant people on Twitter, voicing their equally unimportant opinions on a device they don't own or have even held. Bizarre. There's also an article about how the retail sector may be shitty because the iPhone 4S apparently won't sell as well as an iPhone 5, but I can't read it due to the paywall.
