Amazing to me that journalists (take the term with a grain of salt) like this keep their jobs.
In Apple’s January quarterly earnings conference call, Cook warned analysts, “the supply chain is very complex, and we obviously have multiple sources for things. Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point as to what it meant for our business.”
Cook continued to recommend that analysts not base their predictions on supply chain “checks” throughout 2013. However, a series of analysts have continued to issue “supply chain check” reports that fueled headlines despite being, more often that not, completely wrong.
And yet this habit continues. Yeesh.
Here’s a great piece of advice that was passed along to me…
Whenever behavior mystifies you, follow the money, and almost always it will become clear.
For example, follow the money on the gov’t shutdown and all will be clear as to why this faction was acting so bizzarre, they’re being used by the money, and nothing has or would ever happen that affects the money behind the faction puling the strings. The world is saved at the last minute. Coincidence?
So, follow the money and you understand why the WSJ reporters keep their jobs — because it’s about the MONEY and not about the quality of their work or their critical thinking skills. Papers sold, pageviews, eyeballs, clicks, criticism, MONEY!
We all know this, but we have to make it a habit to REMEMBER this when something odd happens, and it happens a lot, as we all know.
Solid advice Mark, I’ve often used this litmus test.
Yellow Journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism