It’s the biggest scoop in tech journalism history: The gadget blog Gizmodo managed to get its hands on a prototype version of Apple’s new iPhone. The way they went about getting it, however, raises questions about how tech journalists should handle the ethics of getting scoops.
Some history: An Apple engineer (who, for the purposes of this column, shall remain nameless) went to a bar one evening, and according to the person who acquired the phone, said engineer left the phone at the bar, which the finder proceeded to pick up and take with him. As Gizmodo puts it, the person who found the iPhone opened the Facebook app and discovered the identity of the Apple engineer. Gizmodo managed to acquire the engineer’s phone number and e-mail address, but for some reason, the person who found the phone never contacted the engineer directly.
In the meantime, the Apple engineer was frantically calling the bar, in an attempt to get his (well, Apple’s) phone back. Since the source didn’t care to turn the prototype in to the police, or drive over to Apple headquarters, he decided to shop the phone to at least two tech publications, Gizmodo and its rival Engadget. Gizmodo paid the $5,000 price tag and set about dissecting its new toy.
While Gizmodo was busy taking things apart and putting them back together, Engadget published some blurry photos of the phone from the finder. Shortly thereafter, Gizmodo editor Jason Chen posted a video and photos of the device, followed by an article outing the engineer who lost the phone, and finally an article about Apple’s response and the return of the phone to its actual owner.
Why is this so important? Because everything Gizmodo has done has consequences, even if it doesn’t like to think about them. Nick Denton, CEO of Gawker Media (Gizmodo’s parent company) said in an interview with the “Village Voice”: “If you think too much about the consequences, you just become part of the system.”
Unfortunately, for those of us like me, who are looking to get into “the system,” Gizmodo is doing more harm than good.
Take for example the blatant flaunting of the identity of the Apple engineer who lost the phone.
“I find what Gizmodo did distasteful, just as I find most tabloid reporting about celebrities or reality TV stars distasteful,” said Jason Snell, editorial director of “Macworld.”
When I asked Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo about its reasoning in revealing the identity of the engineer, he said “The story would have never been believable with just ‘an Apple guy lost it in a bar.’ The name, the fact that it is a real human being, is what makes the story credible.”
Well, that is, until Apple asked for it back. That’s pretty definitive proof right there. But of course, every story gets better when you drag someone through the muck. The bottom line is Gizmodo overstepped its bounds in proving the story’s authenticity, and the guy who lost the phone paid dearly for it.
The second problem I have with Gizmodo’s coverage: its unwillingness to acknowledge any wrongdoing by their source. Granted, it makes sense that it wouldn’t acknowledge the legal questionability of how it acquired the phone, but at the same time, from its own reporting, it would seem that there were several problems with how the person who found the prototype handled himself. First and foremost, he knew whose phone it was, according to Gizmodo, so it seems odd that he wouldn’t try to return it to its owner, but instead sell it. To me, the whole story seems off, but of course nobody is able to do anything about it due to the source’s and Gizmodo’s secrecy.
Finally, there’s the issue of legality. While I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, the penal code seems pretty open-and-shut about lost property. If it is worth over $400, and the finder can’t get in touch with the actual owner, then it is his or her duty to turn it in to the police. In this case, the finder sold it to Gizmodo instead. I don’t see how that is okay in the slightest. In order to justify it, some people are comparing the sale of the iPhone to Deep Throat on Watergate, or Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. I asked Sree Sreenivasan, a professor and dean of student affairs at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism what he thought about the comparison.
“With Watergate, you had someone acting out of his own conscience, not asking for money. So really, there’s no comparison.”
I agree with his assessment. To say that there’s any sort of comparison between selling a stolen product for no real reason versus giving away evidence of government wrongdoing for the public good is ludicrous, in my mind.
Gizmodo’s conduct has been inexcusable. There’s no doubt about that. Did it give the people what they wanted? Absolutely. But people also want reality television and TMZ. Does that mean the other two are journalistic endeavors? I don’t think so.
