Apple, Gizmodo & Free Press

Shortly before I decided to put book-writing aside and return to consulting, I very seriously thought of writing a book called iPhoneGate.  While the book would walk through the often unexciting saga of Gizmodo publishing unauthorized advance information on the iPhone4, I had bigger issues in mind.

First above all, was the issue of free press in the Information Age. Democracies are partly called that because it has a free press We expect a certain category of professionals to dig and bypass official government declarations and the utterances of company spokespeople to find other facts and perceptions of the truth.

History has found this to be a worthwhile protection because it has often led to freedom being protected and officials being fingered as rascals.

But the press itself has long been filled with lazy, slovenly, inaccurate bums, characterizing themselves as journalists as they report on aliens impregnating celebrities. James T Calender, who described his form of journalism as "scandal-mongering" was hired by Thomas Jefferson to assassinate the character of John Adams. William Randolph Hearst, spearheaded the Spanish-American War to sell newspapers.

So the press has never been this noble institution, of great and impartial minds who dug and risked personal freedom and safety to shed sunlight on the darkest of facts. The Woodwards and Bernsteins some of us came of age idolizing; the freelance reports on the My Lai Massacre by an unknown freelancer named Seymour Hersh, or even the remarkably well-informed essays of modern pamphleteer Izzy Stone were exceptions to what everyday reporters shoveled out during a period some people now call the Golden Age of Journalism.

In fact, throughout the history of the profession we call journalism, most of what was published was universally and indisputably crap.

That would all be beside the point. Except we are now entering a new and very complicated era. Our definition of what is the press is changing. The content is moving. The filtering systems are forever altered.

Gizmodo is part of the Gawker publishing group. Gawker likes to shock it's readers. Among its online publications is an indisputable piece of porn garbage. Everything that they have ever written about me has been unkind.

So, I am not the Gawker gang's best friend. But I believe that their rights are a gate between you, me and erosion of the freedoms that we share.

People point to this as a reason why Gizmodo should not be considered press. They talk of how the Gawker group caused a stunt, to make all CES HDTV screens go dark, allegedly because they were angry about having been scooped by a rival.

But iPhoneGate is not about Gizmodo quality. It is not about professionals acting like low-rent pranksters. It's not even about the ethical questions of paying to get a story, a practice that the New York Tines says it has sometimes used.

It is about the fact that freedom is supposed to be agnostic. Free religion is supposed to respect even those groups that you and I find offensive. Free speech protects the right to publish words and picture that we find repulsive.

It is about defending the rights of people who swim far below the ethical level where you will find Gizmodo scurrying around.

There are many unanswered questions in the iPhoneGate issue. What was Apple's role in the action of a law enforcement team they advise? What evidence did they have that the Gizmodo video could or would do immeasurable damage? If Apple already had the wayward iPhone back in it's possession and police knew who had taken it, just what evidence were police looking for? Are police still investigating? How long can they keep Jason Chen's computer equipment in a locked evidence room?

Other questions, you might consider are your rights and mine helped or hurt when Apple gets to ban a press member from a news conference, because they do not like their behavior? If Steve Jobs can do that to Gizmodo, why can't Barack Obama do that to Fox News, or for that matter, the BBC to most of the media in the world.

This is all been complicated enough. But it is more complicated now than it has ever been because media is migrating to the Web and it is more difficult than it has ever been to define who is a journalist and who is not.

No law enforcement official challenges Gizmodo is press. But what about you and me? Tom Foremski, the ex Financial Times Reporter who now writes Silicon Valley Watch keeps talking about every company being a media company. Well, that would mean that every employee is a journalist. For that matter, every customer who adds content to a compan site is too.

Where does it end? Des it end at all? Who among us is not protected by the same Shield Laws that protect Gizmodo and the New York Times/ Is that a good thing or bad?

Damned if I know.