It’s almost as if people are waiting for big companies or top executives to attack each other’s products all the time. At the recent China Development Forum where Apple CEO Tim Cook was in attendance, Microsoft had provided about 300 Surface Pro 4 tablets for participants to electronically ask questions, and also use a few Office apps in the process.
What was most probably an innocent marketing tactic by Microsoft got picked up by the media and made a big deal of. My question is: is that really a newsworthy piece of information? Have a look at this photo:
This photo has been making the rounds on Twitter, apparently. That, I can understand. After all, it’s a juicy bit of information that gives people the chance to gossip about what Tim Cook might or might not do with the Surface Pro 4 device that was provided for his convenience. And that’s what people do on social media, anyway.
But for mainstream news media and technology news sites to report something like this is nothing short of reporting for reporting’s sake. What’s worse, they got into what other conference attendees did with their Surface Pro 4 tablets, and how some might have used them as stands for their iPads and so on.
We don’t care whether Tim Cook uses the Surface Pro 4 as an iPad stand or a coaster for his glass of water or as a booster seat to see over the head of the really tall Oriental gentleman in front of him at the conference. It makes zero difference to the news world that Cook just happened to be at an event that Microsoft was supplying devices for.
What next? A photo of Satya Nadella wearing a trenchcoat and a bad Groucho Marx disguise and peeping in through the window of an Apple Store? Or how about Google chief Sundar Pichai wearing a T-shirt that says “Bing”? Or maybe BMW CEO Harald Krüger trying to hide his face behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius that he got as a loaner because is Bimmer broke down?
Come on, people! On social media, it’s fair game; on serious news sites, it should be a no-go. On the other hand, if those were Surface Pro 5 tablets, that would be a newsworthy item, because consumer anticipation around the new tablet from Microsoft is already at fever pitch.
My recommendation: if there’s no news, then don’t report it! I’d rather do what the BBC did on April 18, 1930, when the media icon announced that there was no news worthy of being broadcast, and proceeded to air a piano concerto instead!
Take a look: April 18, 1930 – No News Today
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