Real Dan calls out reporter for being PR mouthpeice (Update)

Dan Lyons' thoughts on a recent NYT article about how Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and his PR staff seem to relate to the press and Apple shareholders.

From the NYT article:

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.

And from Lyons:

I’m always suspicious of off-the-record demands, especially in cases like this, and I’m not sure Nocera should have agreed to it. What he produces is a kind of denial that isn’t really a denial. Clearly Jobs and Apple want to get out the message that Steve is okay. They want to protect the stock. They were clearly freaked out about what Nocera might say in his column.

If Nocera had simply refused to go off the record, the burden would have remained on Jobs to get his message out and to do it openly or suffer continued hits to Apple stock. By going off the record, Nocera let himself get played by Jobs and Apple. Consider this. What if Jobs is lying? I’m not saying he is. But gods have been known to lie, especially when dealing with mere mortals. Think of how Zeus looked upon humans and you get an idea how Jobs views pretty much everyone in the world who isn’t Steve Jobs...

Nice work, Joe Nocera. You’ve now become part of Apple’s PR machine..

UPDATE - July 29, 10:16 AM: Ad Age has picked up on this story as well, looking at it as a PR piece.