back to article US mainstream media is Apple's bee-atch

A year-long survey has shown that Apple is the mainstream media's darling, and that coverage of the glories of the digital wonderland edged out stories about its seamy underbelly. "[Apple] attracted more coverage from the mainstream press than any other technology company — and the bulk of it was positive," concludes a study …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This should be a fun comments page

    /me settles in with big bowl of popcorn

    1. Ivan Headache

      Have you seen the coverage

      popcorn is getting now?

  2. Anomalous Cowturd
    Flame

    I was going to write something witty...

    But to be honest, I really can't be arsed. They get far too many column inches on here as it is...

    Flame on!

  3. Efros
    IT Angle

    Just the US?

    Mainstream media in the UK is pretty much in the Jobsian pocket too, perhaps iPocket.

  4. Petrea Mitchell
    Boffin

    What I'd like to see...

    ...is that graph of coverage by company next to a graph of actual market share. And then some data on what percentage of journalists own Apple products-- I'm truly curious if it's really that Apple is brilliant at playing the media, or it's just that the journalists already think the products are cool.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Jobs Halo

      As a former printer...

      ...used to be exposed to journos, hacks, publishers, designers, photographers, reps etc.

      Macs, macs, macs, macs, macs, macs.

      So there's probably a large percentage 'journo bias'.

      Bascially, they think they're cool *and* they get the companies to pay for them. First 5 mins of any meeting was what I called "Apple time", where everyone whips out theirs and envy/mock others, depending on how old/new yours was. Needless to say, I avoided those meetings, or always turned up late.

      Or used to. This was a wee while ago now, in a previous life. Suspect they're all running Dells or HP nowadays, purely for budget reasons. And resenting it - they'd all switch back to Apple in a flash given the opportunity.

      Don't forget the "Hollywood" effect either. Every bloody advert (all medias), film, newsreel all have them draped conspiciously in-shot.

      1. Petrea Mitchell

        Hollywood effect

        Ah, I had forgotten that. True, even in cartoons the computers look Mac-ish. (Except for the occasional anime where they appear to be running X terminals.)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Same Old Story

    I remember a few decades ago when WordPerfect still ruled the roost. I was a review in a them popular PC magazine comparing WordPerfect and WORD. The article highlighted the ease of use of WordPerfect with its host of context menus and how you could right click any object or table and get most of the relevant features needed to edit the clicked object. The substance of the article clearly showed WordPerfect to be much more powerful than WORD and much easier to use. However, the conclusion was that WORD was recommended for everyday use but WordPerfect was recommended for People who made a living doing serious word processing.

    It was the first instance in my life that I can remember concluding that the media is less about truth and more about business. The Magazene was plastered with Microsoft ADs so he who pays the piper dictates the tune. The only consumer PC magazine I purchased after reading that article was Byte.

    Living in the US today I see this at every turn. In every news story. The much publicized case of Fox News firing two reporters investigating Monsanto excessive use of hormones in there livestock operation because the reporters refused to change their story to show the company in a better light is a classic example. In the end the reporters won a case for wrongful dismissal but lost on appeal because the Appeals Court ruled that Fox News has the constitutional right to lie if they want to. Yeah believe that or not its true.

    This story is just another extension of this mess. The Major Media today is about big business and money. Reporting is directed at their bottom line not at informing or telling the truth.

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Happy

      Nah.

      I remember the switchover. Wordperfect 5.1 was perfect for the market as it stood at the time, when the majority of the PCs ran DOS, but Wordperfect for Windows was a dog of the first order, with no consistency to the UI, options scattered all over the place, and it was riddled with bugs, too. Word was a joy to use in comparison, but didn't have some of the advanced features that WP did.

      Thus, it seems to me that the conclusion of the review you mention was spot on - Word was very much the better bet for the average business user (and remember, this was an era when typing pools were still in existence in some companies, so middle managers were often just coming to terms with creating their own documents). Microsoft called it exactly right, Wordperfect blew it, and so Microsoft won. That's business.

      Interesting era, actually. The company I worked for at the time had a couple of products to do automatic file format translation for email attachments, so that a WP user could send an email attachment to a Word user or vice versa and it would arrive in the correct format. The setup supported over 50 WP file formats. Very popular in companies with mixed mainframe/mini/PC installations.

      GJC

      GJC

  6. Eddy Ito

    Say what you will but...

    Back in the day everyone knew how to read Pravda. Pity they don't see any parallels to today.

  7. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Don't have much to say..

    ... but, the mainstream media is not tech savvy, and this is a reflection of that. Jobs' good ol' "reality distortion field" affects media types as well as others, so they then give a glowing review of any Apple product, hyping it up and minimizing (if mentioning at all) the flaws.

  8. Tom 35

    magazine reviews

    You used to get independent magazines that would say something is crap in a review, then they all got bought up by companies that publish a bunch of magazines, and the same product now gets 4 stars in a review next to a full page ad for that product. Computer, Camera, and Audio magazines all went to hell about the same time.

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