John Naughton: Slavish reporters join Microsoft in cloud cuckoo land | Media | The Observer October 5, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJohn Naughton on the lack of questioning claims made by big, powerful companies/individuals — here, Microsoft and the easy ride given to its boss, Steve Ballmer. With special reference to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones:
"our tendency to lose all capacity for critical thought when confronted by great wealth or power […] we see it in the way even hardened hacks go weak when offered an audience with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or even, God help us, Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft.
[…] he went on to say that Windows Vista had been 'the most popular operating system that Microsoft had ever introduced'.
This hooey was conscientiously relayed by Cellan-Jones, who was too polite to ask why, if Vista is such a success, Ballmer is to unveil its successor, Windows 7, to the Microsoft developers' conference at the end of this month. Microsoft is such a powerful company that it never seems to occur to reporters that its leaders might be fantasising. It's the aphrodisiac effect again."