Get this: Tech industry thinks journos are too mean. TOO MEAN?!

We're not your cheerleaders.

But we're yours! Keep up the good works, El Reg! If these ITIF people could censor "bad press" then IT Is Fucked. I'm pleased as punch your business makes a profit! As a freeloading, commentatoring, tech industry veteran I find your choice of stories engaging and informative, as well as being able to cut through the press release hype and give us the real deal. The other visitors are quite amusing and often times very knowledgeable on the subjects spanning your masthead menu. You've made a nice place for me to hang out during the workday, while all my low-maintenance servers serve their bits and bore me to tears with their stability.

Biting the hand that feeds IT?

I guess tech companies find that too aggressive. Try licking the hand. Become romantically obsessed with the fine, soft hands of IT and stalk tech companies relentlessly until they give in under the force of love, or something.

Guess they have something in common with Trump after all

Neither of them understand an adversarial press is a necessary part of a free society. If a tech company wants exclusively good things said about them, well that's what advertising is for!

I guess they wish the press was there to provide free advertising so they wouldn't have to spend money on it.

Press' Responsibility

The press should be reporting the facts as accurately as possible. If that pains someone, they need to look at themselves and not shoot the messenger.

"decline in the favorable coverage of technology"

From my perspective, this is true ... it's been brought on by the decline in new technology that warrants favorable coverage. If your product isn't shit, you won't get a shitty write-up; It's not exactly rocket science, now is it?

The Tech Industry is...

The mother of all Cults: High priests / Lords of Tech enslave the children!

The fact that the mass media usually reports exactly what the marketing heads want, confirms they're just zombies and slaves too.

Otherwise FB's feeble AI failure here would crush the entire industry into a mushy pea. Whereas billion dollar IPO's appear unstoppable.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/22/facebook_ai_fail/

Maybe, just maybe

* The world is waking up to all the nightmares created by big tech, from lax IoT Security to unregulated out-of-control Spying & Slurping.

* If the privacy trade off was worth it once, it no longer is. Comments 2 years ago were passive towards Google / Facebook slurping. But now people are visibility angry / cynical and not just on the Reg. Windows-10 in particular gets negative coverage in the media. That never happened before.

* But its still not bad enough PR because stores selling Android spyware, Win10 Slurp, IoT-hell or Smart TV Spying are part of the whole clusterf*ck.

* They could be warning consumers on the front lines, but instead they're all droids. Who says AI hasn't replaced human workers already! The hive minds peddling this sh1t in the sales chain is zombie like...

* Reg profits up: People are PO'd at not being given factual truths. This goes beyond politics. Its extraordinary how once 'somewhat trustworthy media' like the BBC / RTE are actively still promoting Facebook, Twitter, Google for free, even though they're also crushing them, WTF???

I find the ITIF's stance interesting. The press's job is to report the news.. good and bad. They seem to think it's more about reporting marketing and PR junk. Well... the industry has matured. PR and Marketing don't run things and those of us in the trenches need to know what's really happening. If it's the bad stuff, then maybe, just maybe, the industry needs to clean up its act and fix problems instead of blowing them off until something major happens and gets reported.

It's not all unicorns and butterflies or dreams in the sky. It's security, privacy, workerbees getting used and abused while the C-suits count their money. It's products that blow up or the IoS. Marketing hype and PR platitudes don't cut it.

Hey.... ITIF... it's time you guys got a grip.

As usual...

... there's actually some kind of reasonable point being camouflaged by the stupidity.

I completely agree with El Reg that the bulk of the tech press is, basically, lazy. That is to say, they're quite willing to publish dross that's actually written by someone else's marketing or sales department, lightly edited, and then pretend it's their own findings/opinions. I have no doubt that happens a lot. Always has.

But on the other hand, as well as being lazy, journalists are also stupid. (I'm talking about the aggregate here. Obviously some journalists are brilliant. But remember, the most inexperienced and cheapest journalists have to go somewhere.) Those ones tend to go with the herd, so the herd mood/instinct is a thing that matters.

This is a real problem in the media, caused - like most online problems - by overcapacity. Simply put: the number of stories that the world's journalists (in aggregate) are required to file every week, massively exceeds the number of stories that actually need to be written. This is a hangover from the days when every newspaper/channel had its own coverage, for its own readers; the industry hasn't caught up to the point that on the Internet, a story only has to be published once, then it can be linked from anywhere.

And that herd instinct, for the last ten years or so, has been increasingly technophobic. Some luddism, as always, comes from people who feel their jobs are threatened. Some is actually well founded (think IoT security, punitive EULAs, licensing terms). But a whole lot more comes either from people who've only recently become aware of what's been going on since long before they were born (government spying), or from those who just plain don't know what they're talking about, but instinctively distrust those newfangled Things. And let's face it, if you want to rubbish a new Thing it's not hard to come up with arguments that look plausible to an uninformed eye. (Look at any online forum touching on climate change, for instance.)

This leads to a lot of hacks who don't have any better ideas - basically, rehashing FUD, because if you're a journalist you gotta write something. And most of the time, these hacks know nothing about the subject - they're literally just paraphrasing what they've read elsewhere. So these "stories" become memetic, repeating the same tired old talking points (and if they were paying any kind of attention they'd know most of them were debunked decades ago, but even if they do know that they choose to ignore it because it would spoil their "story").

Critical

When I was younger, my sister liked to paint watercolours. Our mother reprimanded me every time I gave a criticism that was not 100% positive. My sister, on the other hand, valued my criticism. It gave her ideas as to where she should work on.

On the same note, I rarely trust anything I read from Microsoft and friends. Because it is usually overhyped, I end up being disappointed (In-Memory OLTP in SQL Server 2014 anyone?) reality rarely meets expectations.

Because El Reg is only behoven to their local publican, I am much more likely to trust the articles and commentary from El Reg than I am from an organisation so heavily dependent upon marketing.

Thank you for continuing to be the best tech news outlet

Critical review is the best way to drive companies to make better products.

And this comes from a person who got paid by Nokia for 15 years, company you have not exactly praised.

Coming from a tech industry that

Has largely stopped innovating, and is simply evolving

Has prevented innovation and competition by petty or over broad applications of patents

Files lawsuits against its own customers

Largely moving to a licence/fee collection business rather than IT

Doesn't actually make things people want or need due to low risk appetite for "innovation" costs

I second the post above, I support the Register for keeping it real...

What a bunch of wussies

ITIF fails to understand we prefer information over advertisement and other marketing lies.

I've labored long and hard for bread,

For honor, and for riches,

But on my corns too long you've tread,

You fine-haired sons of bitches

Just like happened to any other inudstry....

In the beginning people just see the positive side of innovations - i.e. steam machines, cars, electric appliances, drugs, etc. etc.

Then, when they become widespread, the negative side gets more and more attentions, and that's right - especially since as companies become larger and more powerful they risk to become more "evil" also.

How many companies knew about the risks in their products - often big ones - and kept them hidden?

How often they attempted to exploit their customers? If they don't won't more, suffocating regulations, you have to let the press free of telling what it thinks about your products.

Agree with the gist of the article, but...

Where does objective critial journalism stop and pessimistic nonsense stop?

""The media does have a responsibility not to give more weight to the pessimists and technophobes than is warranted – even if doing so generates more revenue," conclude the report authors, who seem to hate the idea of journalists getting paid for telling the truth."

I could imagine some clown writing this bit for the Daily Mail, before going off on this week's sanctimonious crusade.

>Rather than place the blame for this shift on privacy invasions, defective products, unsavory employment policies, or toxic corporate cultures...

or the fact that, unlike in the 80's and 90's, the industry isn't making significantly better tech, or our lives either better or more fun.

I do not want your rubbish app,

It looks just like some 80's tat,

That I purchased long ago,

It isn't worth having, "on the go."

Those 35 years have made you rich,

But its clear, you've had no creative itch,

Since in your garage you hatched a plan,

To take the tech of some other man,

Its all about the patents now

And the milking of that one cash-cow

You tell us lies 'bout what the product can do

And drip feed features 'til we're blue

Your AI stinks, bright - it is not,

Your code, it suffers from bit-rot,

We cannot trust your new software,

Not to take our data, store it who-knows-where,

To be stolen by some nasty hackers,

Who behave better than your advertising-backers,

You try to feed us browser enhancements,

That's really pants, in all departments,

You want your cloud to be our controller,

I think I'd rather get ebola,

I remember when every day,

We'd run a spreadsheet in 48k

The money that we've spent upgrading,

Is consumed by your awful coding,

Those layers and layers of virtualisation

I've now come to the realisation,

Solve problems of your own devising,

And this is just my own surmising,

That you do not deserve that brand new yacht,

You don't deserve it, not one jot.

IT was fun, IT was cool,

Now its just a huge cesspool,

Of lawyers, http spam

You've made it like,

Green eggs and ham.

So I'll take it back from you,

With Linux and all things GNU,

I may do less, be less connected,

Than you think should be expected,

From all the things that do not matter,

That incessant, inconsequential chatter,

I'll go outside, take my children too,

I'll give no more of my cash to you,

I'll visit friends and drink some wine,

I'll vow to spend more time offline.

I do like tech, I really do,

Tech is still cool - but not from you,

I like to make it do my thing,

All that Chrome - I don't like bling,

It isn't fun when you do it all,

And try to keep me in your thrall.

I do not need your streaming service,

All that slurping makes me nervous.

You do things in an inefficient way,

Far better to broadcast FTA,

So I'll tinker with my PVR,

As some would tinker with their car,

I care not for content though,

MKR? I hate that show.

Recording it, getting it for free,

Is what really motivates me.

I have no interest in your content,

I'll record it all, then auto-delete it.

A billionaire I'll never be,

And that's really fine with me,

I see what happens to a company,

When all it cares about is money,

Unpleasant both to foe and friend,

Flexible morals, truth to bend,

And dodgy accounting in the end.

Those who remember "Pretty Woman"

Can learn a very important lesson,

No, prostitution will not make you lucky,

Its that you don't want to be Stuckey.

I should end this rhyme right here,

Though I'm sure it'll make you sneer,

At tech that does not turn a buck,

I loath your tech and that's tough luck,

For when tech lovers have departed,

Your downfall, it will then have started,

Open source your profits will consume,

You may bored customers' profiles exhume,

Pretend they're valid like Yahoo,

Like like like like on Facebook too,

But when all is said and all is done,

And ads are all "One weird trick, for your tum."

Though in this life you'll do ok,

There is one thing to cause dismay,

That golden parachute, which works so well,

Will land you gently down, in hell.

I read El Reg for the good journalism, humor, and the comments. It's amazing how much I learn from the commentards. I can say that without a trace of sarcasm.

Keep up the good work, all of you.

Let's see what happens when we rephrase...

"The [tech industry ] does have a responsibility not to [turn out crap that spews customers' private information across all creation or spontaneously bursts into flames] – even if doing so [saves up-front money and ] generates more revenue."

Just...wow

It's actually pretty difficult to find a news source (like El Reg) that doesn't barf out marketing half-truths directly from tech companies.

I remember actually writing to the SF Chronicle in the 90's complaining about simplistic tech "articles" that were just press releases with some cub reporter's byline on it.

I guess the point is, it's not difficult enough.