PC World Editor Resigns When Ordered Not to Criticize Advertisers 327
bricko noted a story of our modern journalism world gone so wrong it makes me sad. "Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken quit abruptly today because the company's new CEO, Colin Crawford, tried to kill a story about Apple and Steve Jobs." The link discusses that the CEO was the former head of MacWorld and would get calls from Jobs. Apparently he also told the staff that product reviews had to be nicer to vendors who advertise in the magazine. The sad thing is that given the economics of publishing in this day and age, I doubt anything even comes of this even tho it essentially confirms that PC World reviews should be thought of as no more than press releases. I know that's how I will consider links from them in the future. But congratulations to anyone willing to stick to their guns on such matters.
Good character (Score:4, Funny)
That's good, an editor or news outfit should never be swayed by an advertiser. Guess I'll go read Slashdot's Intel Opinion Center [slashdot.org] now...
Re:Good character (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Good character (Score:4, Informative)
And for the record, I think the Opinion Center's a pile of sh*t.
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good character (Score:5, Funny)
MacWorld is such garbage that even now that I use a Mac for work five days a week - and I don't think a day has passed in the last two months that I haven't had to do something with it - I actually dropped the MacWorld subscription that my employer was paying for.
If you won't even allow the purchasing department to bring it to your desk so that you have reading material for when you're on the can... it's a message :P
Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's too bad, because they used to be a GOOD magazine. These are some things that sent MacWorld down the tubes, and they are responsible for most of them.
So after being a Macworld purchaser and later subscriber for over 10 years, I let my sub end in May 2006.
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Macworld's "Seperation of Church and State" (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't say that they always followed it, but they seemed to take it seriously enough in the past. They wrote articles on it, and they were not afraid to give a half-star rating when warranted. And I remember they often gave one or two-star ratings to prime advertisers like Apple. (They used to use stars, not mice.)
Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Free" Press (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that this has become the "norm", I'm not surprised to see it spreading to other parts of the computer industry. So much for having a free press - guess that they're not really "free" after all if all you have to do is buy a few ads.
2 cents,
Queen B.
Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Funny)
Good point. 4/5
Re:"Free" Press (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to put more weight into reviews on GameFaqs than official reviews in the rags, for exactly this reason. You still get fanboyism, you get people who want to convince themselves they didn't waste $50, whatever. I think "I paid $50, so if I don't say the game is good I admit I'm a fool parted easily from their money" is a lesser influence on people than "If I don't say the game is good, I won't get paid".
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The video game industry has suffered from this for ages. No matter how crappy or buggy the game, it would get good reviews from the rags and web sites. The reason for this is that the gaming companies would threaten to pull advance copies of their next game if any game got a bad review. Since not being to review games would effectively shut down the site/rag, they piped down and played along. It's been going on with the auto makers for decades. Seriously pan one of the new line up, and see what you get to write about next year. The beauty products industry has also long operated along these lines. Write something less than glowing about their new shade of lipstick and see if you ever get another sample. The fashion industry is another example.
Or alternatively if your publication is actually worth more than a pile of dirt you might actually buy the next product from the "offended" vendor and still review it... and then expose them for the asswipe they are.
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The problem being that they don't get an advance copy, meaning that they can't release the review before the game (for all those people wondering if they should pick it up on release day. By the time you buy it, play it, and write the review no one really cares about that game anymore because t
Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the only reason (Score:3, Informative)
Behind the appearance of impropriety is the very real possibility that a manufacturer will send you a known best quality sample, while shipping crap to stores. Remember the stories about manufacturers sending overclocked cards, or other devices with custom/"beta" BIOS to product reviewers? Yeah. It happens.
Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Interesting)
What does happen then? Why do magazines end up publishing good reviews of fairly crappy titles? Because a lot of the time what they are reviewing isn't a finished game, for one thing. It is a 90% done beta because, remember, magazines have to hit the shelves on time, so they have to review what they can get, and they give the publisher the bennie of the doubt. Then there are the trips and tchokies. Want to go to Candlestick Park and take batting practice from Vita Blue? I got that junket for Electronic Games Magazine once. Want a $250 leather jacket for free? Well, you should see the ones we got for the last of the Harpoon series, they kicked ass. And so on. I had closets full of this stuff... Finally, there is simply workload. If you are working in the industry, you never finish a game. You never come close. When I was at the height of my work in that field, I was burning through 200 games or so a year to keep up. How many of them do you think I really *played*? The four or so a year I wrote strategy guides on got completely played, the others got a day, if that.
I really doubt much has changed in the last five years. The industry is very good at influencing the game mags and the game mags and everyone makes money off the gamer. It is a symbotic relationship, but not one where anyone ever actually threatens to "pull" review copies or anything so crass. Again, it might happen to the small fry websites, but not to any of the players.
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There is a french website (www.factornews.com) with editors that have pretty high standards and are known to often criticize games publishers and developers alike quite harshly (and god help you should you release hastily photoshopped preview screenshots). They not even doing this as a full-time job, they rely on advertisements from publishers to pay for their bandwidth, and they're not quite the biggest french video game review website.
Yet they receive f
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Good to know (Score:3, Funny)
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I do find it a bit funny that PC World is now skewed to Apple heh.
Especially after years of being skewed to Microsoft and Dell.
Seriously, I'm expected to believe that PC World (and it's largest competitor PC Magazine) have NOT been shilling the latest PC products lo these many years? If McCracken says no, then that supposed impartiality is a recent shift.
I'd be more concerned that PC World plucked their current CEO from MacWorld which has been a little bleh of a fawning fan-mag for at least the last 5+ years. If PC World were going to make a statement for good editing, t
Wait a... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean the Slashvertisements will stop and you will actually start checking submissions? Never mind PC World, hooray for Slashdot!!
Traditional Media is dieing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:4, Funny)
Way of the world. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a testament to how evil the ad people are that they really see it that way. The time when ads were a necessary evil and and the actual content was the important part is long gone, and we're trending more and more toward the content being nothing more than a lure for ads.
I never thought much of PC World, but I have to respect an Executive Editor who is willing to put his principles ahead of his job. Of course, now I think less of PC World because their damn executive editor had to quit because they put their whoring for ads ahead of the needs of their readers.
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Re:Way of the world. (Score:5, Interesting)
He sounds like a stand up guy. He certainly did the right thing...If your publication descends into newsvertisements there's really no way to get your credibility back. Look at PC Magazine...They gave Norton Antivirus a 4.5 out of 5 one year in a review, and the average customer response was a 1.5, where 1 was the lowest possible score. What a crock of crap.
People don't read things for the advertisements, hard as it may be for ad people to accept that, and if your content becomes one with your advertising, then you start hemorrhaging readers, and your days are numbered.
I can't believe CmdrTaco ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Harry McCracken was editor-in-chief of a major tech mag supported by big advertisers. I find it hard to believe that Colin Crawford's suggestion was anything new. At most, maybe he was just more blunt about it than previous CEOs.
I'm sure there's a hell of a lot more to the story than an oh-so-noble stance by McCracken.
Re:I can't believe CmdrTaco ... (Score:5, Informative)
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If you googled me, I think it'd be more likely that you thought I worked for Slashdot. =P
Harry McCracken? (Score:4, Funny)
Sincerely, I. P. Freely
Re:Harry McCracken? (Score:5, Funny)
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Can we please refrain from... (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Hugh G. Rection
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Re:Harry McCracken? (Score:5, Funny)
Ignore these morons and their childish comments.
I'm so proud of you for standing up for what you believe in.
Your brother,
Phil
Hey, it happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hey, it happens (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but that was a good thing. After all, it's John Dvorak we're talking about.
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You sure that was the reason?
Maybe he got fired because he was just talking out of his ass and people couldn't stand him..... same as now.
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See the Time Cube website for the canonical example.
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09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
YES! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:YES! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's odd that places that do bad reviews tend to stop getting review hardware. If I see a product for the company, and a review site I trust has a review of their older product and says it sucks, I'll take this as an indication of their future products. If I see other reviews elsewhere that say both are goo, I will trust neither. If I see a review for the old one saying that it's rubbish, and a review for the new one saying that it's good, then I will trust that one a lot more, because I know that they are not afraid to say bad things when they are justified. It's odd that manufacturers can't figure that out.
Consumers are responsible too (Score:5, Insightful)
All the money that would be spent up front in buying magazines that are consumer, and not advertiser supported, would be saved when they bought equipment that was the best value for their money, instead of being overly hyped junk.
Re:Consumers are responsible too (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue then becomes the content in the magazine isn't good enough to warrant the price an advertising-free magazine would cost.
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If you care enough to think that this is wrong, then you should care enough to not support that magazine at all. It goes for anything too. If the consumer would actually have and enforce his own values through his purchases, everything would work itself out.
The nature of capitalism is to capitalize upon human greed. That is to say, you can rely upon each individual to act in their own best, short term interests. PC Mag fired someone for not deceiving the customers, thus it is in customers own best interests not to buy the magazine, but to go with a competitor who gives them more accurate info. In general, capitalism takes time to work through high levels of misinformation, but eventually it happens. This has nothing to do with idealism on the part of purchas
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Unfortunately, no. The money is not coming from the consumer. PC World is going to price its magazine at a rate that will help to subsidize the cost of putting it on the newsstands (which, if you understand how that business works, is extremely wasteful) while not alienating readers. The real money then comes from advertising.
Because magazines
British Mags (Score:5, Informative)
Borders and Barnes and Noble carry most of the popular ones.
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Borders and Barnes and Noble carry most of the popular ones.
I'd be inclined to agree if I ever read any UK content... if only I could ever get past page 3.
What next? (Score:2)
Will they send the articles to the advertisers' public relations offices first to make sure the content of the stories is acceptable?
Yes, I know, I shouldn't give them any ideas. But if they're not going to be impartial in their reviews, they should stop calling themselves "media" and start calling themselves PR.
...and that's different than SlashDot how? (Score:4, Informative)
(Also, I can't believe someone here has a PAID subscription to PCWorld; what a mark!)
Who reads computer magazines anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who reads computer magazines, anyway?
Although I am not the most 31337 person in the world, I am pretty much surrounded by the world of computers, but I have never, in my life, put down money for a computer magazine. And no one I know, including many programmers, hardware people, or network administrators, seems to be a follower either.
But yet I see racks of these things at grocery stores. Who is buying these things? Middle management who want to keep up to date with the computer world?
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certainly not PC World though. maybe in a waiting room and there's nothing better.
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There's a place for dead tree still.
Dunno. (Score:2, Informative)
Back in the 80s and 90s I read and cherished every new issue of a certain home computing magazine (for a while I was getting two). But after the internet exploded, it seems quite pointless. There was a while there where I'd consider buying Dr.Dobbs, but then they became... boring (not to mention silly expensive in this part of the world).
I'm currently paying for GDM [gdmag.com] but delivered online. Not very convinient to read (in fact it's almost painful, with the whole issue being multiple layers of images (for "pr
Re:Who reads computer magazines anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, I travel by train, and I love to read the C'T magazine while traveling. It's available in Dutch and German only, unfortunately (for you). It's pretty geeky and pretty good, and has very interesting articles. I used to buy Dr Dobbs as well, but now I only buy the Java specific ones (too many articles that are not in my field). I used to buy the Byte as well, if only for the well written (but very common) articles by Jerry Pournelle. Alas, that time has gone.
It's definately still possible for a magazine to be better written, better informed than most grub on the internet. Of course, 50-70% of the magazines aren't worth a dime, and I won't buy them. I think most computer magazines from the UK are *horrible*, but that might be because we only get the really popular ones. I like the linux magazines very much as well, but they are too expensive over here.
Kilobaud and Dr. Dobbs (Score:3, Interesting)
The current crop of mags is for imbeciles mostly. Occasionally they alert you to something you did not know. And perhaps the occasional feature by feature comparison of two (expen
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Not trying to insunuate that you're a n00b or anything, but back before the internet computer mags were a valuable source of information. Computer Shopper (which used to be several times larger than it is now) w
This has been going on for 15 years (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wel
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Brett
Even tho I am not normally a pedant... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's old hat to complain about the poor quality of editing at Slashdot, but seriously now, "tho"? This is how my 13 year old little sister types in chat sessions, not how the editors of a semi-respectable news site read by millions should write news stories.
In this case, they can't even hide behind the defense that these were the submitter's original words and as editors they can't be expected to catch every little mistake (even though the editors of other sites that have even higher posting volumes like Engadget don't seem to have this problem). In this case, though, this is actually the editor's own words. For shame...
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If they were actually editors, then they couldn't hide behind that defense either, because editing is the editor's job.
But they're not actually editors, they're just called editors.
An editor is one who edits, and as we can see there's none of that going on around here.
Economics of Publishing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought that you got fired... (Score:4, Insightful)
So one editor has morals? Too bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry people this is sadly the way the world works now and it sucks ass. Advertisers always get a good score, and everyone gets good stores unless you totally fuck up. Go to http://www.gamerankings.com/ [gamerankings.com] http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/sites.as
But even more than that, I recently felt like checking out old Xbox games so I went to http://xbox.ign.com/index/reviews.html?constraint
A friend mentioned a good idea as a way to solve this, find a way to get reviews for games written 20 years after the game comes out, to see if the game really does stand the test of time, because otherwise you get this overly biased bullshit where advertising dollars affect the review scores.
The bottom line I've found is every review site and magazine is biased. It's just the simple fact of life that we have to understand when seeking out reviews and articles.
The Economics Of Journalism (Score:3, Interesting)
I have personally seen instances where the choice of the "of the day" or "of the week" featured product was taken out of the hands of Editorial and became a sellable placement without any disclaimer.
They call it "advertorial", but when it's not disclaimed as such, it's the death of editorial integrity. But when the competition is hot and heavy for ad dollars and you have popular competitors who are willing to prostitute their editors... you can't send your bank a note about your solid ethics in lieu of a mortgage check.
This might raise a small tempest in a teapot, and for a brief time create some editorial/advertorial transparency in response to the backlash. But that will merely be the same as a cancer that seems to go into remission.
- Greg
Wasn't that obvious? (Score:2)
I'm wondering... (Score:2, Funny)
A little bit of advertising (Score:2)
We should applaud his integrity (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost the same thing happened to my local news paper [newspress.com] when many key people at the paper quit [blogspot.com] over bias which was being pushed down from above by the paper's owner. It's been a long messy trail since then.
Reminds me a bit of FOX news and Monsanto (Score:5, Informative)
This is really common (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back when it got particularly bad, I wrote this up:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
And if anything, things have gotten quite a bit worse. It isn't the names you might recognize as much as tge power brokers behind the scenes, usually with a good chunk of site ownership.
All of the accused will blather on about firewalls between advertising and editorial people, but it is all a crock, usually worth the recycling value of the pixels it is printed on.
I have been offered bribes, both cash and other from people, but I have _NEVER_ gotten any pressure to change a story for content, although I have had edits made so we wouldn't get our asses sued off for libel/slander/whatnot. I agreed with these in the long run.
To put things in perspective, when I was in the process of ripping HP up and down, starting here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=1
I was at the last Comdex in the press room. I was sitting beside Nathan Brookwood and a CNet guy, and had written a particularly biting piece about HP/Carly (I forget which one, there were many). and I got an email from Mike Magee saying "HP wants to.....".
Needless to say, that was an asshole pucker moment. I clicked on it ready to call my lawyer next, and it read:
"....advertise with us.". I wrote him back and asked if it meant that I had to tone down the stories. I forget the exact wording of the response, but summed up it was "not a chance".
Basically, there are honest editors/owners/management and dishonest ones. The dishonest ones will lean on people to do things that they know better than to do. The honest ones will leave, the dishonest ones will stay, and you quickly get a dishonest organization. (As an aside, the same holds true for companies and PR)
Let me sum this up clearly, there are a LOT of rotten sites out there, and also a lot of good ones. The rotten ones are quite good at hiding/disguising their paid for status, you probably wouldn't recognize it if you saw it. Most people throw accusations of bias around as soon as they disagree with the conclusion a site makes, usually a fanboi-ish thing. This is wrong.
Where you get a lot of the bias is things like roundups of hardware that you can not get your product into if you do not have an advertising contract with the site. Hot samples that are not purchasable being overlooked if a banner ad is running prominently on the site, and other similar things. Things are bad out there. One great one is sites selling awards to companies, you know those logos gold/diamond/three thumbs up/whatever that you see on boxes, can be bought from a number of sites. Look for reviews where you see a mediocre review with a summation of 'Three Silver Starzzz!!!' at the end, and you can be pretty sure money changed hands.
There is also the good old fashioned sending of a review with a check, but that is less common now.
Basically, be skeptical. Read every review about a new release, and look for the one that stands out. Look for reviews that say 'kick-ass overclocking part' and the forum posts saying 'I can't get anywhere near that'. These are not 100% sure signs, but keep a tally, patterns will emerge.
In the end, things are bad. If you are moderately skeptical and have an IQ greater than a warm moist towelette, you will see the patterns. You are not imagining them.
-Charlie
A weird analogy - Gun Tests and other examples (Score:5, Interesting)
The odd thing was that I learned for sure something I had long suspected; gun writers are mostly liars. They love every new gun lent to them for testing. If a gun is a real loser, the mainstream magazines would just decline to publish anything.
Gun Tests was different. They bought popular guns and showed them for the junk they were. The test were wonderful, authentic, and informative. It was exactly the sort of information you'd get from a trusted friend. The problem was that a single black and white only, rough paper, stapled magazine (we're talking just one step above a nice 'zine) of 24 pages or so cost more than 10 bucks, iirc. (And that was a long time ago.)
Which leads me to ask - Is it possible for a testing magazine that doesn't accept ads to be priced affordably enough to actually sell? Is it possible for a magazine that accepts ads to be honest?
Gun Tests had no ads but the cover price was a killer. The Absolute Sound managed combine ads and *seemed* to be objective back when I used to read it, a couple of decades ago, but I was never completely confident in them. Nowadays, I dunno. Does integrity exist anywhere?
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I had a VERY similar experience, but was fired: (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dallas Observer is part of the Village Voice Media chain of papers, and one of the men responsible for overseeing all 17 music sections in the nation, John Lomax, happened to be very good friends with the Dallas publisher (essentially, the city's chief of financial decisions), as they worked together at the VVM's Houston paper for years. Once I wrote about advertisers, my relationship with the publisher vanished, and criticisms from Lomax--which had previously been all but non-existent--jumped tremendously (though he chose to issue his decrees through my Dallas boss rather than send me a single request himself). A month later, the syndicate had a "clean sweep," firing arts and music staff members at a number of papers--particularly the Village Voice's Robert Christgau--in a two-week span. I was fired very abruptly--never EVER given a "do this or else" warning, because as I'd said, Lomax was too gutless to ever issue a directive, nor was I ever given a yearly review. The reason given was "performance issues addressed on a repeated basis," which, as I've redundantly stated, wasn't even true. The replacement editor has followed the "no criticism" rules steadfastly ever since her September 2006 hiring.
The print advertising world is staffed with people who are expected to deliver results on a quarterly basis. The notion of cycles doesn't exist for people who get fired if they have a down MONTH, let alone a down quarter--and the past few years' panic over circulation scandals hasn't helped sanity on that side of any newspaper or magazine's staff. Sadly, that sense of panic has won over most publications' responsibility to deliver trusted content, but any publication that loses its dignity and respect for readers will ultimately be seen for what it is by the target audience.
Or, better put, PC World will get theirs.
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If you were paying a subscription fee for something that was, as you say, "useless" then you were encouraging someone to produce something that was "useless". If people only paid (or in the case of magazines - were counted as part of the readership) for quality products they would encourage people to produce quality products.
Every time you buy something of no value you encourage someone to continue producing such crap.
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He is the one who said he never thought it was a quality product. Not me. By paying for it in the first place - and not one issue, but a subscription, he encouraged them to continue producing garbage.
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Also, I would really like to see what they were going to print about Apple. It sounds like it might have been worth a good laugh or two, even if it was all old hat.
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Hate to burst your bubble, but this isn't remotely close to being the case. The amount of money your average magazine gets from readers is miniscule compared to what it gets from advertisers. In fact, the first thing decided in any issue of any magazine is
It wasn't the advertisers (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course they do (Score:5, Informative)
Piss off the White House? Staffers return your calls a bit late or your sources dry up.
Piss off the military? Well your reports get indented with the folks washing Hummers in the transport park instead of with a section on patrol. So you end up sending home pictures of wet vehicles instead of action shots.
These ae the unwritten rules of the game that keep the media in check. The editors understand this and will discipline staffers who don't play ball.
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I'm sorry, but you're the one writing trash. The Apple security exploit in question was, by the usual definition, a remote exploit - any website you visited could take exploit it. It would only be a local exploit if a local user (or code running with their privileges) had to deliberately try to exploit it for the exploit to work. In fact, given that a lot of people are using routers with built-in firewalls these days, it's a lot more serious t