NYT has clearly not been reporting accurately (in an unbiased manner) about Apple of late.
Maybe it's some friction over subscription revenue.
Maybe it's the inability of NYT to provide a good app. (Ever seen the WSJ on the iPad?)
Maybe it's the realization that Silicon Valley isn't moving to NYC.
There is absolutely no connection between the subscription / revenue side of an organization like the NYT and the editorial / reporting side. They literally don't usually even talk to each other.
The NYT is one of "the" publications of the ruling elite, along with WSJ. Remember how the Times served as a conduit for the war propaganda leading up to Bush's invasion of Iraq? The Times gave Judith Miller carte blanche to report all sorts of lies about the supposed threats posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq, never mind giving William Safire a column on the Op-Ed to do his part to get us cranked up for war. Leading a country to war based upon lies is not what a "liberal" publication would do.
It's clear the Times has become anti-Apple, but let's not call them liberal - they're anything but.
And their coverage of the BP spill in the Gulf was pathetic. There were photos in most blogs for weeks before the Times finally started publishing them.
So I come here not to praise the Times. I am not a subscriber and won't be any time soon.
But I am also deeply unhappy about the path the computer industry has taken. It's not just working conditions, it's also that China is largely coal powered and the contractor companies dump toxic waste, etc.
I'd rather pay more for my gear if that's what it takes to obtain not only quality but an end-to-end supply, sales, and recycling product cycle that is not an insult to nature or people.
Apple is failing here just like all the others. But I care more about Apple because I am an Apple customer, and because I already knew the others were mediocre companies.
What is frustrating is that I cannot vote with my feet. The whole industry is essentially the same, and some of it is considerably worse. All I can do is buy the minimum I need and make it last as long as possible, but I still feel like an enabler of these practices.
To paraphrase Cook, I find it offensive that the tech industry, Apple included, has fostered working conditions worthy of mid 19th-century England.
I'd rather pay more for my gear if that's what it takes to obtain not only quality but an end-to-end supply, sales, and recycling product cycle that is not an insult to nature or people.
OK. You pay $5,000.00 for your iPad. The normal people pay $500.
Yellow journalism is yellow journalism whether it's practiced by a bunch of high school kids or the old farts on the New York Times. They knew they were publishing half-truths and untruths. Que sera sera as Doris Day would say.
If Apple continued to treat them like other news sources it would send the wrong message. If only other companies, government agencies and so on would do the same then we wouldn't be subjected to so much crap and lies disguised as entertainment and "news."
Truer words have never been spoken. I couldn't agree more.
OK. You pay $5,000.00 for your iPad. The normal people pay $500.
Fair enough?
A straw man argument if there ever was one. The difference is just not that high. Apple manufactured in the US till well after Jobs returned, including iMacs, Power Macs, etc.
And I am not even saying Apple should manufacture in the US, as nice as that would be.
I'd pay $600 or $700, no problem, if I knew (not just vague "we are improving" assertions) the money was being used to improve the supply chain. Even more if the product cycle was documented cradle-to-cradle sustainable.
I am already willing to spend more for Apple laptops in part because the cases are entirely made of aluminum.
What would you expect Apple to do here? Imagine yourself in the same situation. Apple is indeed under a lot of pressure regarding working conditions at suppliers plants. There is nothing wrong with the media driving this issue. But there is also nothing wrong with Apple's desire to work closely with supportive media outlets when launching new products. I think most people can read the NYT article and clearly see where there is fairness or not in the reporting. But ultimately, would one really expect Apple to give open invitations to the NYT after that?
The reality remains - working conditions in many countries are terrible. Americans can and have lost those jobs to such places. It is reasonable to explore this issue. Apple indeed needs to answer to this line of discussion. But for product launches who would choose to select outlets with a recent history of sharp criticism? Really!
The public (except some apple addicts like here..) will not think that they punished the NYT for telling lies, but for telling the truth Apple wanted to hide.
The "Evil Apple" image is growing every day, and such practice won't help with that.
Wrong. The "public" will never know this happened. Nerds who read Apple rumor forums (not to mention Android ones and the rest) have already decided how they feel about Apple, NYT et al, so this will have no impact.
The public (except some apple addicts like here..) will not think that they punished the NYT for telling lies, but for telling the truth Apple wanted to hide.
The "Evil Apple" image is growing every day, and such practice won't help with that.
Your post strikes me as another perfect example of all of the "fandroids and Apple haters" grasping at straws trying to find something, anything negative to say about Apple. It doesn't even have to be truthful .... you'll still use it. It's getting tougher everyday to stay on the opposing side of the most valuable and successful company in the world, isn't it? The green eyes of jealousy does tend to distort one's view.
What the NYT did cannot be classified as journalism in my books .... because, as I see it, journalism requires at least some effort to tell the truth, not just "over the fence unsubstantiated gossip". No wonder no one wants to pay for this kind of "reporting" anymore.
To paraphrase Cook, I find it offensive that the tech industry, Apple included, has fostered working conditions worthy of mid 19th-century England.
That's a fantastically apt assessment. It's something that so may of us living in the "21st century world" don't grasp. It's also the reason changes can't be made now or this year or even in the next 5 to 10 years. We're in the "21st century" in the west, but China isn't. China is progressing through it's industrial phase with incredible speed, but it's something that took the western world more than a century. The technology available as a result of the west's industrial development is actually easing and accelerating the process for China, but it can't just be dropped into the west's vision of the modern world. It's not just a matter of technology. Chinese society needs to adapt to the changing technological conditions, to find the meeting of culture and technology that suits it, and that's something that absolutely cannot be forced - it takes decades, not years. It's a growth process not event, and something we can (and do) participate in and influence (but not force), by virtue of of our interactions (direct or indirect) with China on the global stage.
You can, and do, vote with your feet (or your dollars) by choosing products from the companies whose practices you feel best reflect your values (even if it's not perfectly).
Increase the amount of dialog it has with the media. Win them back instead of alienating them. Sell them on stories about all the good things that Apple is doing. Use them for free advertising about how Apple is now doing wonderful things.
The reality remains - working conditions in many countries are terrible. Americans can and have lost those jobs to such places. It is reasonable to explore this issue. Apple indeed needs to answer to this line of discussion. But for product launches who would choose to select outlets with a recent history of sharp criticism? Really!
Apple does have the right to snub the NYT if that's what they want to do. The line they should not even consider crossing is, for example, to remove NYT subscriptions from the App store.
Having said that, the NYT also has the right to publish whatever it sees fit. A few people here don't seem to understand that. As Joseph Pulitzer said: "Newspapers should have no friends".
That's a fantastically apt assessment. It's something that so may of us living in the "21st century world" don't grasp. It's also the reason changes can't be made now or this year or even in the next 5 to 10 years. We're in the "21st century" in the west, but China isn't. China is progressing through it's industrial phase with incredible speed, but it's something that took the western world more than a century.
...
influence (but not force), by virtue of of our interactions (direct or indirect) with China on the global stage.
I could agree with that if we would be talking about home-grown Chinese industry. But we are not. We are talking about our own industry moving to China. Apple and the rest of the industry essentially control the working conditions in those factories. I understand you can't, and shouldn't, try to make China into a Western mirror image overnight or over any period of time. But you can have decent working conditions.
Here is a simple metric: if a worker making iPads can't possibly afford even the cheapest model, the wages are too low. If they have virtually no time off, then the hours are too long. If they can be made to work at any hour, day or night, with little or no notice, then the conditions are too harsh.
China needs to be China, but you don't need to replay the 19th century again every time a country industrializes, particularly if the companies responsible are from the West and already know how that played out.
I'm sure Apple would not take this action if reports about were negative, but nevertheless objective and true. Based on what the Fair Labor organisation said about the conditions in Apple's factories, the NYT report was not objective.
Oh, NYT has a slam on them today. Surprise, surprise.
When periodicals were more about news and less about advertising and subscriptions (which is itself a mistaken view because at one level or another, you need subscriptions and ad revenue to keep the lights on and the presses running) and media was less electronic and more analog - there was LESS pressure to generate hits or popularize the "news" and better (not perfect) focus on capturing the reality of a situation.
Yes, in those days they may well have led with stories about Apple as a hook, but then continued on to report the why of situations of Foxconn's, where you have a huge influx of young people trying to escape the sub-poverty of rural/argricultural China, working long hours because it means you have more money to send home to support the rest of your family. That you committed suicide because that relieved the huge amount of pain experienced trying to adapt to isolated urban living from family based community living at home. And your company promises to send home a large sum of money as a death benefit for your family - little realizing that it would encourage suicides. And that the Chinese government is allowing these operations to grow because it builds and reinforces the Chinese economy by using one of their most expendable assets - people.
And yes the garment industry there is hellacious compared to Foxconn and Pegatron electronics manufacturers, as is mining, metalworking/smelting, mineral processing, and of course the subsistence level farming that a large portion of the Chinese population lives on. But that Dell, HP Sony, Samsung all were using Foxconn for assembly long before Apple came onboard - in fact most PCs in that 90th percentile of the PC market under Windows is built or componentized largely under the Foxconn label. That's nearly a billion and a half units starting well before the iDevice revolution.
But in fact the NYT article didn't dig into the actual issues, the cultural issues or the economic issues. Those all got a quick gloss and the superficial link-baiting tarring of Apple took precedence instead. The media organizations are being thoroughly disrupted by the iDevice/post-PC paradigm shift, and necessity drives action. You could argue that since Apple has been at the helm of the paradigm shift, that the NYT would want to target them as the source of the impact, and mitigate their own failure to be nimble enough to ride the changing media environment back to a successful model.
No news organization is un-agendaed or unbiased. Anyone who claims that is woefully uneducated about journalism, and about how the large media houses influence the agendas and biases. This is why you have openly competing biases now.
No one, including Tim Cook, is trying to give Apple a free ride on driving better working conditions for the world's workers that build the products we consume. But to openly target the one company on record as trying to mitigate the issues, when so many other companies are silent and not open about doing the same thing, while enjoying the benefits of having their popular consumer devices built under similar or worse circumstances. And then to use exclusively anonymous ex-executives to criticize Apple's alleged internal attitudes, doesn't reinforce the strength of the report, it undermines it. Anytime someone relies on the demand for anonymity to report on things like that is a strong indicator that they have a personal agenda to push. Usually in the past, they would use anonymous sources to buttress a strong amount of evidence provided by known sources. NYT didn't do that either. Journalistically from an historical perspective, it was rather pathetic. Moreso if the Pulitzer organization decides to give them a prize for it, simply for the human interest angle. But then Pulitzer is populated by news editors, and itself has been accused of bias in it's own decisions about awards.
I agree. Apple should also ban the idiots at engadget. They've turned extemely biased against Apple since they're mostly Android fanboys.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody
Seems fair to me.
Yellow journalism is yellow journalism whether it's practiced by a bunch of high school kids or the old farts on the New York Times. They knew they were publishing half-truths and untruths. Que sera sera as Doris Day would say.
If Apple continued to treat them like other news sources it would send the wrong message. If only other companies, government agencies and so on would do the same then we wouldn't be subjected to so much crap and lies disguised as entertainment and "news."
The New York Times made it sound like Apple was the worst employer of all the Foxconn clients when in fact Apple was the best. They made it sound like Apple was the most callous when in fact they were the most proactive in addressing labor abuses. They intentionally appealed to American stereotypes about labor conditions in the 3rd World even though they know (unless they have a bunch of incredibly incompetent editors and reporters) that average blue collar working conditions and pay in China is far worse than in Foxconn's Apple operations.
They made that editorial choice because they knew it would be more sensational, sell more papers and get more page views. They could have presented all the facts that they dug up in a more balanced piece but of course that won't generate as much revenue.
What would you do if you were subjected to the same kind of hatchet job?
It is sad to see apologists for any company, let alone Apple which I don't think benefits from nor needs such hollow defending.
First, I'm suspicious of the allegation that Apple blacklisted the NYT at all. As others have pointed out, David Pogue definitely got a personal preview of Mountain Lion. Second, in regards to the NYT reporting on Foxconn and specifically Apple's involvement I think it's grossly unfair to call that a hit piece simply because it shows Apple in a negative light. Even Apple did not dispute the factual aspects of the story, but focused that they take their responsibilities seriously and are at the forefront of improving working conditions in their supply chain. The NYT story and Apple's positive efforts are not mutually exclusive. Now one can reasonably complain that Apple is bearing an unreasonable amount of the attention despite other companies also use Foxconn, but that's a red hearing if the underlying facts are true for Apple.
Things like focus from Greenpeace or NYT articles ultimately make Apple both a better corporate citizen and company, and consumers benefit with safer and more socially conscious products.
Comments
Try reading before offering your opinion.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...p-electronics/
Perhaps this is why Pogue still recieved Mountain Lion a week early and had it demoed to him
I think SJ would disagree with you, he held the NYT in high regard.
SJ is dead. Long live Tim!
NYT has clearly not been reporting accurately (in an unbiased manner) about Apple of late.
Maybe it's some friction over subscription revenue.
Maybe it's the inability of NYT to provide a good app. (Ever seen the WSJ on the iPad?)
Maybe it's the realization that Silicon Valley isn't moving to NYC.
There is absolutely no connection between the subscription / revenue side of an organization like the NYT and the editorial / reporting side. They literally don't usually even talk to each other.
The NYT is one of "the" publications of the ruling elite, along with WSJ. Remember how the Times served as a conduit for the war propaganda leading up to Bush's invasion of Iraq? The Times gave Judith Miller carte blanche to report all sorts of lies about the supposed threats posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq, never mind giving William Safire a column on the Op-Ed to do his part to get us cranked up for war. Leading a country to war based upon lies is not what a "liberal" publication would do.
It's clear the Times has become anti-Apple, but let's not call them liberal - they're anything but.
And their coverage of the BP spill in the Gulf was pathetic. There were photos in most blogs for weeks before the Times finally started publishing them.
So I come here not to praise the Times. I am not a subscriber and won't be any time soon.
But I am also deeply unhappy about the path the computer industry has taken. It's not just working conditions, it's also that China is largely coal powered and the contractor companies dump toxic waste, etc.
I'd rather pay more for my gear if that's what it takes to obtain not only quality but an end-to-end supply, sales, and recycling product cycle that is not an insult to nature or people.
Apple is failing here just like all the others. But I care more about Apple because I am an Apple customer, and because I already knew the others were mediocre companies.
What is frustrating is that I cannot vote with my feet. The whole industry is essentially the same, and some of it is considerably worse. All I can do is buy the minimum I need and make it last as long as possible, but I still feel like an enabler of these practices.
To paraphrase Cook, I find it offensive that the tech industry, Apple included, has fostered working conditions worthy of mid 19th-century England.
I'd rather pay more for my gear if that's what it takes to obtain not only quality but an end-to-end supply, sales, and recycling product cycle that is not an insult to nature or people.
OK. You pay $5,000.00 for your iPad. The normal people pay $500.
Fair enough?
Seems fair to me.
Yellow journalism is yellow journalism whether it's practiced by a bunch of high school kids or the old farts on the New York Times. They knew they were publishing half-truths and untruths. Que sera sera as Doris Day would say.
If Apple continued to treat them like other news sources it would send the wrong message. If only other companies, government agencies and so on would do the same then we wouldn't be subjected to so much crap and lies disguised as entertainment and "news."
Truer words have never been spoken. I couldn't agree more.
OK. You pay $5,000.00 for your iPad. The normal people pay $500.
Fair enough?
A straw man argument if there ever was one. The difference is just not that high. Apple manufactured in the US till well after Jobs returned, including iMacs, Power Macs, etc.
And I am not even saying Apple should manufacture in the US, as nice as that would be.
I'd pay $600 or $700, no problem, if I knew (not just vague "we are improving" assertions) the money was being used to improve the supply chain. Even more if the product cycle was documented cradle-to-cradle sustainable.
I am already willing to spend more for Apple laptops in part because the cases are entirely made of aluminum.
The reality remains - working conditions in many countries are terrible. Americans can and have lost those jobs to such places. It is reasonable to explore this issue. Apple indeed needs to answer to this line of discussion. But for product launches who would choose to select outlets with a recent history of sharp criticism? Really!
That's very bad communication tactics.
The public (except some apple addicts like here..) will not think that they punished the NYT for telling lies, but for telling the truth Apple wanted to hide.
The "Evil Apple" image is growing every day, and such practice won't help with that.
Wrong. The "public" will never know this happened. Nerds who read Apple rumor forums (not to mention Android ones and the rest) have already decided how they feel about Apple, NYT et al, so this will have no impact.
That's very bad communication tactics.
The public (except some apple addicts like here..) will not think that they punished the NYT for telling lies, but for telling the truth Apple wanted to hide.
The "Evil Apple" image is growing every day, and such practice won't help with that.
Your post strikes me as another perfect example of all of the "fandroids and Apple haters" grasping at straws trying to find something, anything negative to say about Apple. It doesn't even have to be truthful .... you'll still use it. It's getting tougher everyday to stay on the opposing side of the most valuable and successful company in the world, isn't it? The green eyes of jealousy does tend to distort one's view.
What the NYT did cannot be classified as journalism in my books .... because, as I see it, journalism requires at least some effort to tell the truth, not just "over the fence unsubstantiated gossip". No wonder no one wants to pay for this kind of "reporting" anymore.
To paraphrase Cook, I find it offensive that the tech industry, Apple included, has fostered working conditions worthy of mid 19th-century England.
That's a fantastically apt assessment. It's something that so may of us living in the "21st century world" don't grasp. It's also the reason changes can't be made now or this year or even in the next 5 to 10 years. We're in the "21st century" in the west, but China isn't. China is progressing through it's industrial phase with incredible speed, but it's something that took the western world more than a century. The technology available as a result of the west's industrial development is actually easing and accelerating the process for China, but it can't just be dropped into the west's vision of the modern world. It's not just a matter of technology. Chinese society needs to adapt to the changing technological conditions, to find the meeting of culture and technology that suits it, and that's something that absolutely cannot be forced - it takes decades, not years. It's a growth process not event, and something we can (and do) participate in and influence (but not force), by virtue of of our interactions (direct or indirect) with China on the global stage.
You can, and do, vote with your feet (or your dollars) by choosing products from the companies whose practices you feel best reflect your values (even if it's not perfectly).
What would you expect Apple to do here?
Increase the amount of dialog it has with the media. Win them back instead of alienating them. Sell them on stories about all the good things that Apple is doing. Use them for free advertising about how Apple is now doing wonderful things.
The reality remains - working conditions in many countries are terrible. Americans can and have lost those jobs to such places. It is reasonable to explore this issue. Apple indeed needs to answer to this line of discussion. But for product launches who would choose to select outlets with a recent history of sharp criticism? Really!
Apple does have the right to snub the NYT if that's what they want to do. The line they should not even consider crossing is, for example, to remove NYT subscriptions from the App store.
Having said that, the NYT also has the right to publish whatever it sees fit. A few people here don't seem to understand that. As Joseph Pulitzer said: "Newspapers should have no friends".
That's a fantastically apt assessment. It's something that so may of us living in the "21st century world" don't grasp. It's also the reason changes can't be made now or this year or even in the next 5 to 10 years. We're in the "21st century" in the west, but China isn't. China is progressing through it's industrial phase with incredible speed, but it's something that took the western world more than a century.
...
influence (but not force), by virtue of of our interactions (direct or indirect) with China on the global stage.
I could agree with that if we would be talking about home-grown Chinese industry. But we are not. We are talking about our own industry moving to China. Apple and the rest of the industry essentially control the working conditions in those factories. I understand you can't, and shouldn't, try to make China into a Western mirror image overnight or over any period of time. But you can have decent working conditions.
Here is a simple metric: if a worker making iPads can't possibly afford even the cheapest model, the wages are too low. If they have virtually no time off, then the hours are too long. If they can be made to work at any hour, day or night, with little or no notice, then the conditions are too harsh.
China needs to be China, but you don't need to replay the 19th century again every time a country industrializes, particularly if the companies responsible are from the West and already know how that played out.
That's ironic since the quality of NYT articles suggests they're mostly written by children.
true. that's why foxconn just announced raises for workers....nothing to do with the reports i am sure
I'm sure Apple would not take this action if reports about were negative, but nevertheless objective and true. Based on what the Fair Labor organisation said about the conditions in Apple's factories, the NYT report was not objective.
Oh, NYT has a slam on them today. Surprise, surprise.
NYT is pouting. Childish.
Yes, in those days they may well have led with stories about Apple as a hook, but then continued on to report the why of situations of Foxconn's, where you have a huge influx of young people trying to escape the sub-poverty of rural/argricultural China, working long hours because it means you have more money to send home to support the rest of your family. That you committed suicide because that relieved the huge amount of pain experienced trying to adapt to isolated urban living from family based community living at home. And your company promises to send home a large sum of money as a death benefit for your family - little realizing that it would encourage suicides. And that the Chinese government is allowing these operations to grow because it builds and reinforces the Chinese economy by using one of their most expendable assets - people.
And yes the garment industry there is hellacious compared to Foxconn and Pegatron electronics manufacturers, as is mining, metalworking/smelting, mineral processing, and of course the subsistence level farming that a large portion of the Chinese population lives on. But that Dell, HP Sony, Samsung all were using Foxconn for assembly long before Apple came onboard - in fact most PCs in that 90th percentile of the PC market under Windows is built or componentized largely under the Foxconn label. That's nearly a billion and a half units starting well before the iDevice revolution.
But in fact the NYT article didn't dig into the actual issues, the cultural issues or the economic issues. Those all got a quick gloss and the superficial link-baiting tarring of Apple took precedence instead. The media organizations are being thoroughly disrupted by the iDevice/post-PC paradigm shift, and necessity drives action. You could argue that since Apple has been at the helm of the paradigm shift, that the NYT would want to target them as the source of the impact, and mitigate their own failure to be nimble enough to ride the changing media environment back to a successful model.
No news organization is un-agendaed or unbiased. Anyone who claims that is woefully uneducated about journalism, and about how the large media houses influence the agendas and biases. This is why you have openly competing biases now.
No one, including Tim Cook, is trying to give Apple a free ride on driving better working conditions for the world's workers that build the products we consume. But to openly target the one company on record as trying to mitigate the issues, when so many other companies are silent and not open about doing the same thing, while enjoying the benefits of having their popular consumer devices built under similar or worse circumstances. And then to use exclusively anonymous ex-executives to criticize Apple's alleged internal attitudes, doesn't reinforce the strength of the report, it undermines it. Anytime someone relies on the demand for anonymity to report on things like that is a strong indicator that they have a personal agenda to push. Usually in the past, they would use anonymous sources to buttress a strong amount of evidence provided by known sources. NYT didn't do that either. Journalistically from an historical perspective, it was rather pathetic. Moreso if the Pulitzer organization decides to give them a prize for it, simply for the human interest angle. But then Pulitzer is populated by news editors, and itself has been accused of bias in it's own decisions about awards.
Seems fair to me.
Yellow journalism is yellow journalism whether it's practiced by a bunch of high school kids or the old farts on the New York Times. They knew they were publishing half-truths and untruths. Que sera sera as Doris Day would say.
If Apple continued to treat them like other news sources it would send the wrong message. If only other companies, government agencies and so on would do the same then we wouldn't be subjected to so much crap and lies disguised as entertainment and "news."
They made that editorial choice because they knew it would be more sensational, sell more papers and get more page views. They could have presented all the facts that they dug up in a more balanced piece but of course that won't generate as much revenue.
What would you do if you were subjected to the same kind of hatchet job?
First, I'm suspicious of the allegation that Apple blacklisted the NYT at all. As others have pointed out, David Pogue definitely got a personal preview of Mountain Lion. Second, in regards to the NYT reporting on Foxconn and specifically Apple's involvement I think it's grossly unfair to call that a hit piece simply because it shows Apple in a negative light. Even Apple did not dispute the factual aspects of the story, but focused that they take their responsibilities seriously and are at the forefront of improving working conditions in their supply chain. The NYT story and Apple's positive efforts are not mutually exclusive. Now one can reasonably complain that Apple is bearing an unreasonable amount of the attention despite other companies also use Foxconn, but that's a red hearing if the underlying facts are true for Apple.
Things like focus from Greenpeace or NYT articles ultimately make Apple both a better corporate citizen and company, and consumers benefit with safer and more socially conscious products.