NY Times Tries to Untangle Analysts and Shills 179
twitter writes "The Register and others are examining a New York Times effort to eliminate bias from technology reporting by not echoing paid opinions. (Other coverage here.) They target Microsoft specifically. InfoWorld has an insightful summary of the two sides of this old debate. Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and Astroturf are not considered but should be. Companies using these tactics deserve to be held at arm's length, but that's hard to do when the company is also a monopoly able to make or break any 'expert.' It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise."
The problem isn't just with tech stories (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
What everyone seems to be missing here is that the problem isn't just restricted to tech stories; their track record is just as bad when it comes to real world news. Remember Judith Miller and the "proof" about Iraq's WMD [huffingtonpost.com]--the one they wound up apologizing for, years after we'd gotten mired in Vietnam II? Of course, it's a step up from citing totally made up sources (e.g. Jason Blaire's "composite" sources [wikipedia.org]), but not by much.
They used to be the paper of record, but now they're just another waste of dead tree pulp.
--MarkusQ
It looks like (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody needed [nytimes.com] to try out [nytimes.com] the search engine [nytimes.com] on their front page. [nytimes.com]
Re:Is this true? (Score:5, Informative)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=99
Editors' Note
Published: November 10, 2006
An article in Business Day on Tuesday described a decision by Microsoft to offer movies and episodes of television shows for downloading through its Xbox Live online service in the United States.
The article quoted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, discussing the features that set Xbox Live service apart and its position in the market.
But the article did not note that Mr. Enderle had Microsoft as a client, a fact later pointed out by a reader. Mr. Enderle does consulting work for several of Microsoft's product groups, though not for the one developing the Xbox; still, had The Times known of Mr. Enderle's work for Microsoft, it would not have sought out his opinion on the product.
Ideal Sources of Information, When Used. (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe they should rather make up their own minds. Much as I agree with the EFF and the FSF, they do have their own agendas.
That agenda makes those groups ideal sources of information for newspapers. Newspapers ultimately serve their readers or perish. The FSF, EFF and Opensource.org all have the user's freedom and prosperity as their goal. They are expert and impartial to industry interests.
The agenda of FSF and friends has little to do with pushing a specific program or platform. The FSF, for example, recognize BSD and Linux distributions as a free OSs, despite having their own kernel. They don't care who's tools you use, so long as they are free.
That perspective does not make them ignorant, or even impractical. All groups, to one extent or another, bow to practicality. GNU was written on non free software at one point because there was no other available. The opensource.org group are especially flexible in this regard and generally worry about performance before freedom.
The problem, from my perspective, is not that "mainstream" journalists can't make up their own minds, it's that they have not been talking to everyone they could. Making up your mind in ignorance is worse than doing nothing. The discussion of "alternate" operating systems never seems to get further than a brief mention of Apple. GNU is rarely mentioned, even though Apple, Sun and others use the GNU toolset. It's not even an ideological problem, if you buy into the "Linux is Communism" nonsense, because there are plenty of commercial Linux distributions ready to sell you non free software as addons the same way Michael Dell does. Informed decisions come from knowing the options. Something is clearly missing when a search for:
Re:Softwarechoice.org (Score:2, Informative)
It's a good article to read actually, I recommend it.
Re:Decide for Themselves (Score:3, Informative)
Ask anyone who's followed the SCO lawsuit saga and they'll tell you about the major Microsoft shills. Enderle (his own "group", just him really), Didio (garner), Daniel Lyons (forbes), and Maurice (sorry, didn't follow that part so well).
These folks know how to work the media. They appear quoted over and over again. They have massive bias. Enderle is the by far the WORST.
Of the many Enderle stories, he gave a keynote speech at some SCO developer conference... after things had gone pretty far south for SCO and they were well on their way to being the laughing stock they are now. Enderle reportedly was cussing and swearing about the open source world, practically paranoid that someone in the audience was an open source spy or some-such.
Sure, the register likes to bash other more, er, established publications at any chance. And yes, the "policy" doesn't seem to make sense. But if you read the register article (yeah, I know, this is slashdot, but still)... it doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see this is probably the NYT finally getting fed up with Rob Enderle.
1: Here's how wrong Rob Enderle has been about Apple [daringfireball.net]
2: More Enderle stuff [scripting.com]
3: Enderle's take on SCO's lawsuit with IBM - yeah, right [eweek.com]
4: Even Wikipedia has a Enderle entry, listing his poor prediction history, if only briefly [wikipedia.org]
Rob Enderle is quoted VERY FREQUENTLY. If you read this little comment (likely to remain only +2 cause it's not posted in the first several minutes), please remember just one thing:
Whenever you see Rob Enderle quoted, read with skepticism.
Sadly, he's very good at getting quoted all over the place. Hopefully the NYT will no longer be among the rags that takes the easy way out and prints whatever convenient sound bite he's serving up that day.