Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Apple Financial, Bad Apple, Apple
San Jose Mercury News blasts Jobs
Despite the green light given to Steve Jobs and his executive team by an internal Apple investigation, the San Jose Mercury News seems intent on proving otherwise. Apple is giving Jobs a "Free Pass", claims one recent article which cites a Boston University management professor and a managing director of research at Glass Lewis. Another article points out that Steve Jobs helped pick several of the directors on Apple's board. We learn from yet another recent piece that the civil lawsuit has "turned up [the] heat" on Apple and yet another article offers a timeline of the scandal while another points the finger at Jobs for his role in backdating. They say all news is local, perhaps this is just an expression of the Mercury News' local interest.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joe said 4:12PM on 1-05-2007
San Jose Mercury News is owned by the MediaNews Group, Inc. This is from the Wikipedia entry about MediaNews:
In August 2006 the company acquired around $350 million in loans to purchase four newspapers from McClatchy Company. Among those providing the loan was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.[1] The loan was mostly used to help pay for the acquisition of San Jose and Contra Costa newspapers (and some smaller papers), which accumulated to roughly $737 million in total.
wikipedia
Mercury News did not disclose their potential conflict of interest in their article.
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Scott Stevenson said 5:14PM on 1-05-2007
I get the feeling this wouldn't get nearly as much press if it was any other company. The reality is that no one on the outside has anywhere near enough information to make a judgement -- either for or against, so I think we should just let the folks involved do their job.
I actually think independent bloggers and such are qualified to make judgments about Apple products and services, but most are completely out of their element in internal financial matters. In other words, knowledge about Apple products does not translate to this.
For what it's worth, I think TUAW does it the right way: point to the stories and let people make up their own mind.
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Tod said 7:16PM on 1-05-2007
Around here (Snata Clara County) many of us refer to that rag as the San Jose Murky Sleaze. for some strange reason the business section staff has been notoriously anti-Apple. The only one who wasn't, Dan Gilmour, left to pursue other interests that didn't involve the sleaze factor. Many of the business columnists are nothing more than gossip columnists and the y love to get whatever second hand dirt they can on Jobs.
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Guy said 6:20PM on 1-05-2007
This is in response to #1. First off Mercury News doesn't have any conflict of interest. There might be some stretch of conflict of interest if the article were about Microsoft, which apparently it wasn't. Second Apple may be a competitor of Microsoft, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave them a loan, they don't own the paper, if Bank of America give a paper a loan they can write articles about Chase Bank. Also even if Microsoft owned them, they could still write the article without disclosing anything. Fox news can broadcast a story about the San Francisco Giants even though Newscorp owns (or owned, not still sure) the LA Dodgers.
This also sounds awfully conspiracy theoryish. Come on, do you think Microsoft cares so much about this that they will ask a newspaper that their founders foundation gave a loan to, to write an article that paints Apple in a bad light? First off they may be competitors and all things about Microsoft stealing things from Apple aside, they are not in the same ballpark much less same league when it comes to company dominance in the financial field (which this whole thing is about). Before I start getting slammed for saying something negative against Apple, let me back up that last statement with hard facts. All these #'s are from 2005, since the 2006 #'s won't be released for about 2 or 3 more months. These all came from the Forbes top 2000 public companies list publshed March of 2006.
Micrsoft is #55 and Apple #283, Microsoft had $41.4 Bil. in sales to Apples $16.9, thats 244% more
Microsoft had $13.1 Bil in profit compared to $1.6 Bil for Apple, that is 807% more.
Microsoft has 474% more in assets and $221 Billion more in market value, almost 5 times the market value of Apple.
Financially Apple isn't close to Microsoft. Before someone says, but Apple had a banner year we don't know what 2006 did for these #'s. That is true but Apple didn't close this gap by much if any. Microsoft probably has a better year with the Xbox 360 out for a full year, so Apple would need to have doubled what they did in 2005, which they didn't to make this even worth arguing.
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Reg said 7:11PM on 1-05-2007
Just what do these news rags want?
To first bankrupt Jobs then send him to jail? He deserves it. He only rescued the company from certain oblivion back when it was bleeding cash, losing talented employees, and being written off by every news publication that could spell "beleaguered." Only went on to provide much of the tech for everyone involved in the Web 2.0 revolution.
Virtually every company on the NASDAQ plays around with employee options to some extent. Backdating wasn't actually illegal if it was accounted for correctly, but the complexities of doing so meant it often wasn't.
Doing a Martha Stewart on an inspirational captain of Silicon Valley is a bit extreme.
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Rob Knight said 8:28PM on 1-05-2007
And where does options backdating rank in the grand scheme of corporate corruption/scandal?
Near the bottom in my opinion.
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Robert said 1:31AM on 1-06-2007
People still read newspapers?
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jh said 1:28AM on 1-06-2007
"Doing a Martha Stewart on an inspirational captain of Silicon Valley is a bit extreme."
I love how you just copy and paste that everywhere.
Look, Martha didn't do any insider trading, and the jury found that she INDEED SOLD THE STOCK LEGALLY.
She still went to jail.
What's the difference between "an inspirational captain of Silicon Valley" and "an inspirational businesswoman who has run successful businesses everywhere she went."
Oh. That's right. Nothing.
There's nothing extreme about making examples out of people who are influential and have noteriety.
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AlMeister said 2:51PM on 1-06-2007
@3, Guy;
*yawn*
Go troll somewhere else windoze boi.
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Guy said 3:08PM on 1-06-2007
@9, AlMeister,
WOW! That was stimulating...if my post was so boring, why did you bother responding? You just don't like that fact that I don't get on my knees and kiss Apples ass. I do own a Mac, and a Windows PC(yes people can own both, and use both, I am a gamer, and Windows gives me the options in games that Mac can't). You are the reason people make comments when I say I have a Mac. If you aren't going to add to the topic, then don't bother.
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jh said 5:36PM on 1-06-2007
@10, Guy
Don't you get it? Steve Jobs can DO NO WRONG. Apple can DO NO WRONG. Oh sure, they'll find one or two "token mistakes", but all in all, if you have anything critical to say about Apple, the platform, the people behind it, or the people running it.. you're just a windows fan and therefore irrelevant.
And these people wonder why Linux desktop share is passing their own.
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