In addition to creating a fantastic media promotional blitz to jack up the public for the iPad, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs cajoled many of the big name newspapers and magazines to create a special edition of their publications for the device. The not-so-subtle message is that you are all toast. Your future is the iPad.
And while this may or may not be true, it added a new dimension to the promotion machine: conflict of interest.
What kind of reviews can we expect to find in those same grandiose publications? Well you can be sure that they are not going to slam their future distribution medium.
The reviews came out this week for a device the public will buy on Saturday. We see these written up by Apple’s hand-selected core of tech journalists who are known to be friendly to the company and soft with reviewing its products.
It’s the usual suspects plus the emergence of the two major news weeklies, Time and Newsweek, to out-and-out promote the iPad as the future of, uh, well, everything!
No mention that their future will be dependent on the success of the device.
Media Notes columnist for the Washington Post Howard Kurtz, covers most of this pandering in his column today but fails to connect the dots to the conflict of interest. But why bother when the basic material of these reviews is so hilarious?
In Kurtz’s review, he ribs the reviewers who mostly swoon over Steve Jobs and what a great human he must truly be.
“I have met five British Prime Ministers, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen. My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more nervous than any of those encounters. I know what you are thinking, but it’s the truth. I do believe Jobs to be a truly great figure, one of the small group of innovators who have changed the world,” Fry writes.
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