How Apple’s ‘Blacklist’ Manipulates the Press | Hacker News Reader

How Apple’s ‘Blacklist’ Manipulates the Press

cultofmac.com

81 pointsvilgax51 comments

Is this a problem? If you write articles saying that you don't like me, I probably won't send you any free stuff or invite you round to my house. They're a consumer electronics and software company, not a government department. If they don't want to talk to you or send you any free stuff, that's up to them and I'm 100% fine with that.

Why do you need to visit them or get free equipment from them to write articles anyway? Wait for it to be released to the public like everyone else.

Public perception is influenced by the first reviews published on a new product. If you give a few known friendly writers early access, there will be a few days of nothing but positive reporting. Mainstream media will then pick this up as "overwhelmingly positive" response to the new thing.

Of course Apple has the right to behave like this. Nevertheless, it's good for consumers to know that the early reviews are carefully shaped, so if you want a balanced picture, you need to wait until after the public release.

Uh, who exactly doesn't realize all companies try to control press coverage? Controlling perceptions is the concise version of a PR job description.

This, exactly. Not really sure why this is such a revelation.

Apple's target market doesn't give a shit about anybody's reviews of their new products. Their target market will buy whatever new products they produce simply because of the Apple logo on it.

This effect is grossly exaggerated. I'm a self-described Apple "fanboi" but I make sure to read every product review and make an intelligent decision. I'm still on iPad 3 ("the new iPad") and iPhone 4S for this reason.

It is a problem - just more global. With PR moving into more and more orwellian grounds there should indeed be widespread public education on their practices and how to avoid/protect from them.

And with the crackdown on fake/paid/influenced reviews, shills and other similar stuff seems the society is waking up.

While I strongly condemn limiting the freedom of speech I do think that there should be detailed disclosures on what kind of stuff the person doing the review is getting. And yes early access should be on that list.

Transparency is a potent tool.

Apple has a long history of manipulating the press in other ways too.[1][2]

So, this doesn't really surprise me.

[1]http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-prs-dirty-little-secre... [2]http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_contro...

Controlled leaks and a blacklist. Isn't this what EVERY company on earth does?

Also: it's not a blacklist as he describes it. It's a WHITE-list, since there are people (like Grubber or Pogue I guess) that get stuff earlier.

It's not like Apple people give interviews etc to anyone -- so it's not like there's a blacklist of people not getting access.

There's just a whitelist of people having early access. I've seen this from MS, Adobe, Google, Canon and generally tons of other companies.

He's putting himself on my blacklist by using OnSwipe. How is that shit not dead yet?

What is OnSwipe and why is it so bad? Never heard of it until now. I'm not even sure what it is from the front page of their website.

A shitty, laggy, memory-eating UI for mobile/touchscreen devices that people who have absolutely never used a tablet put on their websites thinking it makes them cool. In reality, it is a sort of reverse-DDoS on mobile web users.

I assume it's really a secret plot by Microsoft to make the mobile web unusable and drive everybody back to PCs where they're still semi-competitive.

Ok, now, can someone demonstrate some insight and/or thoughtfulness by explaining what OnSwipe is supposed to be? Their offices are next door to ours at Union Square, and the people that work there do not appear to be assholes hell-bent on ruining your mobile browsing experience.

I'm not sticking up for OnSwipe, but this litany of "OnSwipe is evil" has become something of a religious ritual on HN, and for once I'd like to see if we can do better than a mindless chant.

What do we think the people who work at OnSwipe are setting out to do?

Your question is mindless. We all know what OnSwipe is supposed to be. It's sufficiently obvious as to need no explanation.

If you care that much about getting deeper insight into how yet another horrible, misguided product came to foul the market with its stench, why don't you walk next door and investigate instead of doing your old man yells at clouds routine? You're obviously both better-equipped and better-motivated than the rest of us to get answers. If that's not enough to make you do it, don't expect anyone else to do it for you.

Why be an asshole? Write your comments for the readers of HN, not for whomever you're replying to.

I have no idea what OnSwipe is supposed to be. It's not obvious at all.

> Why be an asshole?

In my opinion, I am not an asshole, but at least one other person in this thread certainly is. Why ask this question? Has my answer contributed anything of value? Were you expecting it to?

> Write your comments for the readers of HN, not for whomever you're replying to.

Do as you say, not as you do?

> I have no idea what OnSwipe is supposed to be. It's not obvious at all.

It's a UI for mobile/touchscreen devices. I even stated as much in my original comment, and I reject the notion that it is non-obvious.

Every time you encounter a crappy example of a product category, do you ask what the product is supposed to be? What answer are you even expecting? "This is really bad spaghetti." "OK, but what is it supposed to be?"... Wat?

What does it mean to be a "UI for mobile/touchscreen devices"? Mobile devices already have UIs. What is it trying to add to those? It's obviously trying to add something, unless you literally believe the developers that go to work in that office are setting out to make your life worse.

It's certainly trying to add something of value - the problem everyone seems to have is that it's failing at that task pretty badly. And not in the sense that the developers are incompetent or lack skill - but in the sense that what they think is a better UI experience is very definitely not an opinion shared by others.

This is further aggravated by the fact that many site owners choose to use them.

It's not trying to add anything to the device. It's trying to add a touch interface to websites based on a common (if itself questionable) paradigm. And it's doing it very badly.

It's the terrible software that they are using to cripple the web interface in tablets. The browser on my iPad is great... No need to paginate with swipes.

it's a tablet version of sites with horrible usability.

You can get rid of it by blocking onswipe.com . But then again you lose the useful filter of seeing which websites still use it.

In every field there are dishonest people you want to avoid dealing with. So I'm sure every company more than about a year or two old has encountered reporters they'd never want to talk to again, beyond things like press releases that go to everyone.

There's a bit more to it than that. Apple blacklists reporters and publications that are -critical-, not (just) dishonest.

Trade journo here (not tech). No need for blacklists in some/many/most segments. Upset corp. hatchetman calls publisher, says either the offending reporter goes or our ads do. I haven't seen a whole lot of publishing backbone/pushback out here lately. (Not that that's changed much.)

Flipside is fancy junketeering, with publishers letting corporations host journos for new product events or 'market updates' held in resort destinations. That's the list journos want to be on, 'but it doesn't impact our objectivity.'

I was with him on the "blacklisting people in the press is bad" thing. When he started comparing it to the red scare you really have to worry about his connection to reality.

Further down... "It needs to be said, of course, that comparisons between, say, McCarthyism and Apple’s PR strategy are absurd. I make them here only to illustrate the history and purpose of blacklisting."

"It needs to be said..." After spending several paragraphs mentioning the most egregious black list example in US history. Sorry, but "this is just an illustration" is just a cop out given the example was there to set a particular tone.

The article could have been written without the extremes of prior examples.

The longer you read the article, the further and further he gets from accusing Apple of anything, really. He's quick to point out that the blacklist tactic shouldn't affect how you see the tech press. Towards the end he admits that the difference between a whitelisted journalist and a blacklisted one is practically nil.

Read between the lines and you see it's just a matter of status and pride. You get one kind by being on the blacklist and another by being on the whitelist. The author is clear which side he'd rather be on.

And that's the real point of the article. To show off how 'independent' he is by daring to compare Apple to Joseph McCarthy.

I caught a bit of the same, it felt like the introductory paragraphs were really meant for sensationalism and to create some buzz, which probably worked.

I remember Engadget being "asked" to stop covering jailbreak-requiring iPhone apps.

Gosh. If I could laugh I would have been doubled over. Does the author really think that Apple put this much thought into not letting certain journalists into new coverage. This is pretty much a thought of a conspiracy theorist, Apple surely doesn't think about communist conspiracies from the 1940s, they merely think you're either a bad journalist or one who is consistently unfair. The detail in which the linked article puts forth is ridiculous. It's over-analysis at it's most laughable.

If you know anything about big companies and PR, you would know that much of what he says is true. They do indeed monitor what various media outlets say and create an "enemies list" that will be starved.

Even big and influential media may not escape. Apple doesn't need to cooperate with the normal reporters on the New York Times who ask hard questions about conditions in Chinese factories, they just need to court David Pogue.

Companies do maintain black lists in the same way that Hollywood did in response to McCarthy and there is a small industry of "research" to did out info on peoples political and other activities eg raising H&S issues

The construction industry has been doing this for decades in the UK and I bet companies like walmart do it in the USA as well.

If you dont see the problem you need to read up on the industrial history of the USA

I absolutely assume any company even close to as big as Apple spends 'that much thought' on managing their PR, absolutely. I'd be shocked if they did not.

That doesn't neccesarily mean they maintain a blacklist or whatever. But 'that much thought'? Certainly. Of course they do. It's bizarre to suggest that they don't spend 'that much thought' on PR.

> Does the author really think that Apple put this much thought into not letting certain journalists into new coverage.

Techniques to control public image over social networks are getting more and more attention. For example academic papers here: [1].

Of course I don't know about Apple in particular, but really doubt that they don't look into this "just because".

[1] http://icdm2012.ua.ac.be/content/session?id=15

So, are you saying that Apple, probably one of the most secretive and PR savvy companies in the world, doesn't give much thought about its relations with the media? Really?

The article wasn't talking about a conspiracy, read it again. It's just what you said, Apple doing PR control.

If they think that criticisng Apple or its products makes someone a bad journalist or unfair and they are blacklisted, then in actuality they do care a lot about journalists.

A tech journalist is at a disadvantage with the rest if he is denied early access to products, and he won't get that unless he writes pretty things about Apple. We have a word for that: blackmail.

If there is one tech company today that is obsessed with managing its PR, from every angle, it has to be Apple. I don't find it far-fetched at all the Apple has put a lot of thought into how to get early favorable reviews from big media. It's the same reason they basically invented the modern theatrical press event: a huge part of what they sell is an image. Managing that image is paramount to their business.

"Does the author really think that Apple put this much thought into not letting certain journalists into new coverage. "

Dunno about the author, but me? Absolutely, yes.

Not just Apple either. Probably every large business with a half functioning marketing and PR operation.

Quite right as well. Its their job. Present the product in the best light possible to maximize profits of the owners or share holders. That is the purpose of business.

I make no moral judgement. Its just raw capitalism. The trick is to know this and to never accept a single source, then make a judgement.

Now consider how the government does the same thing to the press and how it affects political coverage especially the notion that the media is a check on power.

Having working with PR departments of various companies, almost all had some sort of blacklisting/whitelisting for journalists and media outlets. Seems to be perfectly normal because the job of those departments is to influence media coverage to be positive and widespread. Working with some journalists is more effective than working with others and some have proven in the past to not be worth spending time (and money) on.

Mike Elgan concludes: "Ultimately, it’s not that big of a deal." True, but then readers should ask: Why is he writing a big column singling out Apple for this behavior? Eyeballs?

In general:

> […]you should know about it so you can be a better-informed media “consumer” and consumer electronics customer.

Why he is singling out Apple, my guess would be because it's an Apple news site?

>> "If wasn’t on Apple’s “blacklist” already, this post would surely get me on it. It’s totally worth it."

Really? You make money writing about Apple and you think it would be worth it to intentionally piss them off and get blacklisted? I can understand writing a bad article about a bad product and getting blacklisted because you don't want to lie in a review but a conspiracy piece that also mentions how the Chinese government jails journalists makes you look worse than Apple. If I was in charge of giving out invites to journalists at Apple I'd exclude you, not because you wrote something negative, but because you wrote something really over the top and pretty crazy.

What list is MG Siegler on?

One of the linked articles http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/16/apple-public-relation... suggests he's on the team, or at least was last year.

Reminds me of when CNET was blacklisted by Google for publishing Schmidt's personal info that was available on Google searches after he downplayed privacy.

http://boingboing.net/2009/12/09/google-ceo-says-priv.html

'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.' - George Orwell.

Deleted comment

Tries to compare Apple's behaviour to McCarthyism. Hilarious really, the kind of paranoid, whining nonsense that is only taken seriously by witless Apple haters, the sort that downvoted you without comment, presumably.

Why do you think the comparison to McCarthyism is incorrect or inappropriate, let alone laughable? Please note that OP didn't say that Apple's blacklist makes it just as bad as HUAC or Uncle Joe.

Of course the author himself notes that a direct comparison is absurd, and that the examples from the Red Scare are illustrative of the purpose and historical context for blacklist.

Perhaps you were a bit hasty in calling others witless.

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