Apple benefits greatly from the fact that "journalists" are some of their most devoted fans. That gets them free coverage that's wildly disproportionate in both volume and positivity. Not to say they don't make good products - I have to admit that they do - but they escape a lot of harsh scrutiny that other companies have to deal with. Terminally online techies are another core demographic, resulting in a similar skew on social media sites like ... <looks around> ... um, Reddit.
You're stating as fact that this kind of reporting happens to Apple and not to other tech companies. But that has hardly been established. I often see dubious news stories about several of the companies on your list, and back and forth discussion about those stories. So I'd add a fifth explanation: You're seeing lots of these stories because you're following people who blog about Apple. If you're bored of bogus Apple controversies and want to see fewer of them, just stop reading the blogs of Apple pundits.
I feel as if every little thing Apple does get reported/blogged about and you have all this faux-outrage and people trying to make stories where there aren't any. I don't know of any other company that get scrutinized so hard. I hardly think Apple gets a free pass when it comes to the tech community.
It's sort of a gray area because Apple doings are generally considered newsworthy by HN readers. The author is a columnist for the LA Times. Columnists, like newspaper editorial writers, almost never back up their arguments with data or cite sources. They don't leave their offices to dig up information in the field. I think of them more as pundits than journalists.
Well whatever the case, they get coverage because they know it will get attention and interest from people. They write whats gonna be read. Either thats people reading how bad the new Apple products are or how new and innovative they are.
I would agree but Apple has a handful of journalist it 'likes' and get's first shots at a lot of things. Not saying this is the case, and this is a good thing Apple does. I think its just ignoring a important part of the Apple ecosystem, the product itself.
The problem with Apple criticism is a lot of it seems full of cheap shots and unfair framing, like this Panorama report.
That makes it more difficult to tell when a criticism of Apple is genuine, because every idiot journalist looking for a controversial story can write a story about something Apple is doing not well enough and get away with it, since everyone seems to love to hate on Apple.
So if Apple really is up to no good in some area of their business, we won't have a clue, because it's drowned out in tripe like this.
Because Apple is both secretive and very successful - they do not comment on rumor, they do not comment on their intent, they do not comment on criticism (positive or negative), they only talk about their existing product, never about the past( all the compromises and features ) and as little as possible about the future. Yet, despite that, they manage to affect everyday people life.
The same conditions that drive people to read the future in tea leafs, or judge God intent in the colour of the sky.
That makes 90% of all the blogs and article about Apple completely useless. When they are correct, it is by chance, and very often when they are not correct, they cannot really be proven wrong.
I see. That must be the explanation for why the media didnt blow iPhone 4 "Antennagate" out of proportion, and why the media gave Apple a pass for using the same Foxconn factory journalists gave Dell and others such a hard time for using...
On the contrary, Apple is reported on like a celebrity because celebrity sells magazines, papers, or page views. The reporters are happy to write admiring articles, but even happier if they can find dirt to dish. The more controversy, the merrier.
Even on non-controversial topics, writing the contrarian point of view is more likely to drive links and page views and "engagement". Why do you think Joe Wilcox has a job? And why did MacWorld employ Dvorak? Turns out people get hired for dissing Apple.
Seems like a case of mentioning Apple to get people reading. Samsung isn't as sexy so they ride the Apple story trend. It's fun to see reporting that mentions Apple evolve. First it was cool to say Apple is dead, then it was cool to root for them as the underdog, and now it's cool to try to tear them down again. There's never a middle ground. It's always about handing out heaping helpings of praise to a company or tearing them apart when it's a TC article.
It's hardly a free ride. Sure, journalists pay more attention to apple than they maybe deserve, but that's not because journalists have some great apple bias. it's because the apple PR department works their asses off to cater to journalists and make their product launches media friendly events. They deliver their product in easily reportable chunks, and they craft a public image so that news about apple is what the media's customers want to read about.
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