Categories: OLD Media Moves

How Apple suckered the financial media

Jon Markman writes for Forbes.com about the recent coverage of Apple’s release of the new iPhone 6.

Markman writes, “But I will admit to being a little distressed last week at watching the technology titan sucker the investment media into covering the release of its new iPhone 6 mobile phones as if something really special had happened.

“My favorite station to watch during the trading day, besides ESPN and the MLB Network, is Bloomberg TV. They have the smartest reporters and anchors and the best guests. But even they gave into the hype, as the normally excellent anchor Emily Chen asked veteran reporter Cory Johnson and his guest, Gene Muenster, which new iPhones they were planning to buy, then dug for details on color and memory. They happily divulged their purchases, with an underlying message that the only sane response to the release of new iPhones was to buy one immediately.  On the web, meanwhile, was an iPhone 6 review video by Bloomberg editor Sam Grobart that signed off with the message that, with the bigger screen sizes, now there was no reason for people to buy an Android phone.

“The slavish attention to Apple’s product releases is unseemly. The financial press, including the major New York outlets, has been fully co-opted into the Apple marketing machine.  Editors will  defend themselves by saying they are just  giving viewers what they want.”

Read more here.

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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