Tags: Mobile Phone Industry, Technology Industry
By Alexander Villafania
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA – Tech news website Gizmodo has been in the news lately but not in a way that most people would want to be.
After outing an alleged prototype of the next generation Apple iPhone, later confirmed as authentic also in a leaked letter alleged coming from Apple Senior Vice President Bruce Sewell, the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen was raided last April 27 by the California police as part of an investigation of the lost iPhone.
The phone itself was promptly returned, according to Nick Denton the publisher of Gawker Media, which publishes Gizmodo. The prototype iPhone, allegedly lost in a bar last March 18 by an unwitting software engineer at Apple, was sold to Gizmodo for US$5,000.
But the issue has raised a stir among technology pundits and journalists in general. Many have questioned if Gizmodo ever expected the fallout that might happen when they do publish the story and post the video of the purloined iPhone.
Some even accused Gizmodo of chasing after the page views that their actions would generate. As many Web-based media outfits know, generating readership can improve the company’s standing in search engines that makes them valuable real estate assets.
If that was the case, then Gizmodo had done a good job in generating that kind of traffic. In the days of the iPhone debacle leading to the break in at Chen’s house forums and social networking sites were abuzz with comments.
For instance, the comment string in Digg.com showed that majority of comments were chastising Gizmodo. A few have also criticized the Apple employee who alleged to have left the unit.
Gizmodo was also accused of practicing “checkbook journalism” a euphemism for paying sources to provide highly classified information, which will be used for stories. A post in Technobuffalo pointed out that the payment of US$5,000 for a device could have been a small price to pay if the result are thousands or millions of impressions and story backlinks.
Michael Calderone who writes for Yahoo! News in his post theorized that regardless of the fact that Gizmodo threw media ethics out of the window, the value of such a story could have pulled in millions of page views.
“Even at a conservative cost of $2 per thousand page views from advertisers, the scoop would have brought in $20,000; dropping to 50 cents per thousand, Gizmodo would still break even.”
Incidentally, the prototype iPhone could have landed in the hands of Gizmodo’s chief competitor, Engadget, if it weren’t for some legal evaluation if it was even worth buying.
In an interview with CNET, Joshua Topolsky said they were also offered to buy the unit and they had entertained the idea of shelling out money. He said they were conflicted with the prospect of acquiring a major device that could have generated more traffic for the site but they finally decided against it.
While Gizmodo remains at the middle of the debacle, there has been some contention as to whether police action to raid Chen’s home was justified. Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation was quoted by Wired.com as saying that Chen was still protected from warrants by state and federal laws, which meant he could file for damage against the police for entering his house.
In a conversation, former T3 Magazine Philippines Associate Editor Ed Geronia says Gizmodo’s actions was certainly almost the journalistic equivalent of offering money for an exclusive interview with an informant.
Like Granick, Geronia, who is now with Spot.ph, criticized police action against Chen. “Despite what the source says, there was no way for gizmodo to be certain that the prototype wasn’t stolen. The police should have first asked Chen for his cooperation on the matter assuming there was a criminal investigation underway.”
With this development, the issue could even be mired towards Gizmodo harking for the protection of journalistic rights despite debates over the way they handled the iPhone leak. As Alexandra Fenwick wrote at the Columbia Journalism Review, “ this episode doesn’t exactly represent sound journalistic practice.”
(Photos taken from Gizmodo)
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Hi, maybe you meant iPhone instead of iPod in the first sentence of the second paragraph?