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Originally Posted by PatNY
Whether that impacted their reporting is not known, but their coverage has been hilariously over-the-top and at the extreme end of the spectrum, using words like “inquisition” to describe what is happening to Apple. As such, one should approach their coverage with a dose of healthy skepticism.
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This is exactly the sort of language I expect from that publication, which is my point: While it's always good to be skeptical about conflicts of interest, the
WSJ is perfectly capable of resorting to brow-slapping hyperbole without any.
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Obviously, those who support Apple in this case will eat up those words, extreme hyperbole or not.
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I get your point, but I might agree with you more if the above statement read, "Obviously, those who are
willing to believe that everything Apple does is right and fair might eat up those words, hyperbolic or otherwise." Again, I hope that a given person who chooses to support Apple will not accept skewered reporting and misleading interpretation. There's a lot of spin in the world, and every faction on every side of every question ought to be thinking analytically.
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But no matter where you stand, you should at the very least be aware the conflict of interest is there so you can better judge yourself whether there are other motives driving the coverage.
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I've been saying that about the inherent conflicts of interest in mainstream coverage ever since encountering Lee and Solomon's
Unreliable Sources in the late '80s. But I'm still hopeful that persevering reporters and principled editors can sometimes push accurate coverage even when their parent companies would rather they didn't. That was my own experience, at least, in writing (very occasionally) for newspapers.