Wired News conducts a clinic in bad journalism
Wired News published a horrible story this morning. In Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill, author Leander Kahney writes:
To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft’s management, Apple Computer’s iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft’s workers.
Now read the story. Read it carefully. (I’ll wait.) Note that the entire thing is based on an interview with one “high-level [Microsoft] manager who asked to remain anonymous.” From this one source, we are able to calculate with confidence that 16,000 employees at Microsoft’s Redmond campus own iPods and that management is ready to send teams of security guards out to locate anyone wearing white earbuds and send them to a re-education camp.
Well, having spent a fair amount of time around Microsoft’s campus, I can tell you that this story is mostly … what’s the word I’m looking for here? Ah yes, bullshit. I have no doubt that lots of Microsoft employees own iPods. But taking an offhand remark from an unknown source (who may or may not have a hidden agenda and who may or may not know what he’s talking about) and extrapolating it to the entire campus is just silly.
I’m fairly certain that senior management at Microsoft would rather that all Microsoft employees used something other than an iPod, which is why the Windows Media team is working so hard to come up with devices that could compete with the iPod and be called something like, I don’t know, “insanely great.”
One thing they teach you in Journalism 101 is that when you have a single anonymous source, you don’t have a story. That’s still true. When you’re covering a subject outside your normal beat (which appears to be Cupertino for this reporter), you can’t just talk to one person. And if you’re going to quote a post from Scoble’s blog, why not actually, you know, talk to Scoble, who actually publishes his cell phone number right there on his highly trafficked site?
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Update: Paul Thurrott read the Wired News story and had the same reaction I did: “Hide The Truth, Here Comes Leander Kahney.” Meanwhile, Scoble says he declined Leander Kahney’s request for an interview. And a pseudonymous Slashdotter takes note of my remarks about not publishing a story based on a single anonymous source and comments, “Well, you’ll never get a job at CBS with THAT attitude, young man!” Heh.
Update 2: The Seattle P-I Microsoft Blog has a nice round-up of commentary on this story.
Update 3: Don’t miss Leander Kahney’s comments. He thinks Mac fans are “paranoid” and “defensive.” Imagine that…
45 Responses to Wired News conducts a clinic in bad journalism
Man, Mac zealots sure do have a hard time with humor! For those who didn’t quite get it, the Division Two site is absolutely a parody. Try this on for size:
Mac Mini: The Emperor’s New Computer
By leaving out a USB keyboard and monitor, two things you may already have if you have an old Mac, Apple can shave some money off the price of its system components and the size and weight of its packaging. By using cheap Asian child labor to assemble the units, costs have been reduced even further. I would like to see them continue this trend, possibly strike a deal with China to use inmates to assemble the Mini for even less, like Lenovo does.
And Cliff, call me old-fashioned, but I still think that when you write something for a “news service,” that your “statements” should be accompanied by “proof” and “substantiation.” Not the kind of evidence that you need to send someone to prison, but enough for a reasonable person to think that you’ve made a compelling, well-supported argument.
Of course, I suppose you could have been writing a very clever parody. I may have temporarily lost my ability to distinguish actual argument from parody. In fact, maybe the whole original article was a parody. I mean, the author does have a blog called “The Cult of Mac” …
Actually, limiting news reporting to what can be supported by proof or substantiation would not serve any useful purpose and would in many ways be harmful.
For example, if the Wall Street Journal finds a high level Bush administration official that wants to remain anonymous but is willing to state for the record that the Bush administration is writing memos telling Treasury Dep’t employees not to talk about the dangers of the deficit, should the Wall Street Journal only report that if it can find another source that says the same thing, or “substantiation” of such memos can be found?
Obviously not, because the public interest is served by this information getting out. Requiring “substantiation” just limits information dissemination and debate, which is contrary to the public interest.
Sure, which mp3 player to buy is not as important as the deficit, but technology reporting is important to our economic welfare. It’s important that people understand the merits or demerits of products and companies that make products. It guides good economic decisionmaking, which helps our economy.
Another thing wrong with limiting reporting is that it’s paternalistic – it assumes that people would be better off not having this information, because it might be wrong or they can’t figure out that it’s wrong. But it’s better to let the information get out and people can judge it for themselves. Wired made clear that one source was reporting this – so the reader know that. They can attribute as much or little belief to it as the want.
If you want to argue what Wired reported is wrong, that’s fine (although I don’t hear you arguing that MS management is not concerned about its employees using iPods).
The problem is your claims that Wired violated some norms of journalism. In fact, what you’re proposing would actually be a disservice to the public.
Seems to me the problem is a propensity to believe the worst about Gates/Microsoft FIRST, then worry about facts later, if at all. Of the two dozen professional programmers I know, only two of them listen to music while coding. The rest tend to get in, get the job done, test it, and compile. Maybe the author could get a job at FoxNews next.
re: iPods
Does it really hurt that much to realize the digital music game is over for MSFT? Does it?
Well, then use Vaseline.
Yes, this was clearly an example of shoddy journalism. NO newspaper would ever publish a story so thinly sourced as this, with such obvious exaggeration (80% use iPODs? Come on). The writer could have spent an hour calling people at Microsoft and easily gotten a dozen folks who said this wasn’t true, but they didn’t.
That said, please don’t let this poor journalism make you think ALL journalism is bad. yes, there are some some journalists out there, like this one and a few who used to be at CBS, who aren’t very responsible, but in general, most of the reporters I know are very responsible. Unfortunately a few bad apples tarnish the whole profession.
The writer called MS and didn’t get an answer. He called Scoble and didn’t get an answer. He was supposed to keep calling people at MS and expect an answer?
80 percent was his estimate. Since iPods have 65 to 70 percent of the hard disk mp3 player market in the U.S., is that so hard to believe?
Newspapers do publish single-source stories, all the time.
The main thing the source was saying was that MS management is upset about the fact that lots of MS employees are buying iPods. How many MS sources would be willing to say this? Wired found one person, who attested to something completely plausible (MS management upset about iPod usage of MS employees).
I guess you didn’t get my attempt at trying not to take everything so seriously.
“Regarding the whole article, I didn’t take it all that seriously. It read more like a fun article that started from a single fact/source.
For bad journalism, check out this site…”
And to refer to me as a Mac zealot having a hard time with humor!!! Whose calling the kettle black? First, I am not a Mac zealot since I work with a Windows PC everyday. But regardless, maybe Windows PC zealots are feeling a bit under siege these days.
And I was serious about those two “contradictory” statements both possibly being true.
Please corrects the author on quite a few mistakes.
Example: “They can’t both be true.”
Yes they can.
I can give anecdotal evidence: I have witnessed senior Microsoft employees walk out of a meeting when an otherwise completely qualified vendor made the mistake of demoing some work using a competitor’s product.
This article is not surprising, and not obviously a stretch. Some people just can’t take it when the shoe’s on the other foot.
The way I read the figures was:
80% of MS employees have an MP3 player.
80% of MS employees with MP3 players have an iPod
You seem able to ridicule those figures and dismiss them out of hand.
Lets see now.
16000 out of 25000 is 64%
80% of 80% is 64%
iPod marketshare is 65% to 70%
Seems like a pretty good match to me. There have to be a few more musical dunces on the MS camp than the average population.
Please: your defense of the journalistic merits of this article amuses me. Out of a company of 25,000 employees the thesis of the article is primarily backed by the statements from one “high-level” employee. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time believing that a single employee of known limited influence within the company can accurately represent the personal comsumer habits entire company’s employees.
As an example, I personally know a guy who is fairly “high level” employee at IBM as a Senior IT Analyst. If I told you that he told me that 64% of the employees in his multi-national company use Verizon cell phones, how accurate would you expect that statement to be? Would you expect that I would be able to call up IBM, ask to speak to a senior executive (who might be able to possibly verify such information or direct me to somebody who could), and not get rejected immediately, thus recieving ‘no comment’. I think even a New York Times journalist would have trouble with that one.
You’ve got a problem with this kind of reporting (just heard it from a single undisclosed source at ms) and then you say Paul Thurrot (the king in this kind of ‘journalism’) agrees with you…
although I agree with the initial statement you’re trying te make, it proves that you’re not serious about your statement and you’re as biased as the article on wired you hate so much.
“The pot calling the kettle black”
Looks like your karma is turning on you….
Note to the MS apologists:
Why don’t you go beyond the 80 percent estimate provided by the source? That seems to be all you can talk about. Yet that was not the biggest part of what the source said. The biggest part was probably that memos have been issued reflecting concern by MS management.
This is a typical lame debate technique you use when you don’t have much to work with – go after the weakest or most easily challenged part of what the opponent is saying and then ignore the rest . LAME
Apple zealots will always like to hear lies from tabloids like wired magazine, and wired magazine will produce news apple zealots like to read. I don’t see the problem. Certainly Wired is not a serious magazine and certainly it has never been one. I don’t see the problem here. This is not the first time Wired produced such false articles. Look to other online tabloids, they all produce such “news” from time to time. I particularly know that some of them produce deliberately just to get more hits from slashdot. Wired is not different.
Apple zealots are insecure people. They want to feel important and to do that, they continously bash others. The world ignores them though.
“Apple zealots are insecure people. They want to feel important and to do that, they continously bash others. The world ignores them though”
Yes, that’s why everyone constantly talks about how low apple’s market share is but how much press they get? Or that practically every tech news source in the world has run stories on the ipod, and more recently the mac mini.
Yep, we are starved for attention and seek it out constantly.
As for the response given to Leander’s article I think everyone knows how shoddy and opinionated Paul Thurott’s supposed journalism is (he’s like a walking microsoft billboard, or you could say he’s the microsoft equivalent of an apple zealot), and linking to him doesn’t do much for your own opinion on the article Ed.
Oh My Gosh! I thought this was a free country. Shouldn’t anyone have the right to buy the player of their choice regardless who they work for? I’m sure when the Sony Walkman came out plenty of people from competing consumer electronics companies bought them as well. I’m sure that Bill Gates would even agree that there is nothing wrong with buying using and owning an Apple iPod. So what that it doesn’t use WMA. The point is that it plays the music that the owner wishes to play and stores their contact and to-do list as well as notes. What’s not to like? There are probably plenty of Apple employees that own XBOXes too. Should they be fired for that???? I say, let them eat cake!
Correction—
Doesn’t play protected WMA, iTunes gladly converts unprotected WMA files. So there! Lastly, an iPod is a great accessory for Mac Mini’s. Especially since it can be used as a backup bootable drive. As well as general purpose firewire drive. How many competing players have bootable firewire, autosyncing contact and to-do capability and can easily switch between it’s native OS and Linux??? Not too many!
The iPod, a peripheral that is also a platform. For that alone, it deserves all the props. Microsoft doesn’t make mp3 player so it’s really no skin off their teeth. They have there high demand Xbox and Apple has their high demand iPod. Everybody wins except the suckers that try to make competing hardware against the iPod while relying on Microsoft’s cheesy slopware. Microsoft should make joysticks, mice and Xboxes and leave the software to the professionals in Cupertino.
Huh, look at all the feedback this entry got relative to the other entries… you should cover Apple-related news more often.