Apple, The Media, And Marketing

Should a new version of a phone make international news?

It is quite astonishing how much of the news is taken up with Apple releasing their iWatch and the iPhone 6; newspapers, online news sites, it's splashed all over the world press. Is a new version of a phone really newsworthy enough of that much press?

It's rather frightening to think of how much power Apple has. They are bigger than a country. They make the news more frequently than civil unrest in many countries. There has been much talk about just how much tax they actually pay. Some think it's as little as 9%. Imagine telling the government you are only going to pay your taxes if the rate is 9%.

No one is under any illusion that magazines are slaves to advertising and many writers accept gifts of 'this will make your hair shinier than sequins' shampoo in return for writing in glowing terms about their merits under the guise of unbiased market studies. You would hope, though, that journalists reporting news are interested in uncovering real news. I'm sure they are. Just as I'm sure beauty writers would prefer to be paid more and write honest reviews of products.

There is always a balance to be found between encouraging investigative journalism and needing to bring in revenue to pay journalists in an era where newspaper sales are dropping like stones, but plastering Apple all over the place doesn't seem very balanced. We at Mosh are guilty of it too. We are writing about Apple in this article, and we wrote about their Health app to go on the iPhone 6 here. Enough already. It's just a phone. Having said that, we have written about it maybe just once more. And added some of the inimitable Russell Brand's views.

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