Opinion – A computer company with an insignificant share of the world market today announced it would be holding a press conference on September 9, throwing world stock markets into turmoil and causing journalists to reach for their hyperbole buttons.
Shares of Kleenex tissues soared today as journalists desperately sought to outdo each other with wild speculation as to exactly what the company had planned for the earth-shattering announcement. Skanks of New York Blogger Rosemary Port was reported to be filing a lawsuit for compensation after being knocked off the front pages of blogs around the world.
As hacks jostled for position on Google News with speculation on what Apple might be announcing – an iPhone identical to but incompatible with earlier models, a tablet PC so revolutionary that all of them omitted to mention that tablet PCs have been around for 20 years, or just whether Steve Jobs would bother to put in an appearance, other less significant news items were pushed into the background.
“Who cares if there are wars in the Middle East causing thousands of deaths, famine in Africa, storms washing away whole towns in Taiwan and the whole global economy is in meltdown?” asked news editors around the world. “As long as Apple is about to launch a new shiny thing, we’ll be speculating about it until our eyes bleed. Give me 2,000 words on Apple’s history of innovation. Now.”
And before you start emailing in, no, we haven’t been invited to the most important event ever in the history of history. Like any other journalists too proud to swallow whatever garbage Apple’s PR behemoth spews forth, we will continue to point out that the emperor may, in fact, be stark bollock naked.
Never let it be said that we aren’t ashamed to admit that sometimes, we aren’t afraid to say we’re embarrassed to be clumped in with the “journalists” spewing out this sycophantic crap. Apple is scared to even send press releases to people who might question their wonderfulness and we’ve been on their list of death for years.
So, my fellow hacks, continue writing of your unquestioning loyalty to a company that’s contributed as much to the world as anthrax. We’ll just watch you typing your credibility and critical faculties into oblivion in the hope of getting a free iPhone to review.
To see what were once proper news organisations, like the BBC, national papers around the world and even the occasional decent IT publication bending over and taking it from a two-bit gadget maker, quite frankly makes us puke.
