The Reuters Spin On Paid Advertising
All the major news organizations would love to have you believe that the content they give birth to is factual, researched and void of opinion. As such, we would all like to think that the news media has a set of standards that prevents them from crossing into unethical territory.
Robert MacMillan is doing an excellent job of removing the public's veil of ignorance.
On March 10th, 2006, MacMillan published an article so completely void of morals or significant information, I feel as though society has died a little inside.
The story reads like a sales pitch from a used car dealer, naming Best Buy and its computer service child, Geek Squad, 8 times in a piece that was supposed to be about the perils of wireless networking. Unintelligent quotes from the company's employees include an appeal for potential customers to buy new computers instead of trying to network "older" ones. A careful use of words aims to convince the reader that Geek Squad is not only a capable choice for network troubleshooting, it's the only choice.
I sincerely hope that this fusion of journalism (I use that term loosely) and advertising does not become commonplace. However, the fact that this article slipped past Reuters quality control and made it onto several news sites, including CNET's News.com, I fear that corporate dollars have already won this battle.
I'd like to take this moment to notify you that, chances are, you have a high school student in your community that is probably more capable of computer and network troubleshooting than your closest Geek Squad technician. One that will likely charge little or nothing.
Robert MacMillan is doing an excellent job of removing the public's veil of ignorance.
On March 10th, 2006, MacMillan published an article so completely void of morals or significant information, I feel as though society has died a little inside.
The story reads like a sales pitch from a used car dealer, naming Best Buy and its computer service child, Geek Squad, 8 times in a piece that was supposed to be about the perils of wireless networking. Unintelligent quotes from the company's employees include an appeal for potential customers to buy new computers instead of trying to network "older" ones. A careful use of words aims to convince the reader that Geek Squad is not only a capable choice for network troubleshooting, it's the only choice.
I sincerely hope that this fusion of journalism (I use that term loosely) and advertising does not become commonplace. However, the fact that this article slipped past Reuters quality control and made it onto several news sites, including CNET's News.com, I fear that corporate dollars have already won this battle.
I'd like to take this moment to notify you that, chances are, you have a high school student in your community that is probably more capable of computer and network troubleshooting than your closest Geek Squad technician. One that will likely charge little or nothing.
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