“There’s a certain air of mystery as to what Apple is up to when it comes to content. In March, Apple acquired digital magazine service Texture in a move that illustrated quite clearly the company’s intentions to dig deeper into content delivery on its devices,” Joshua Fruhlinger writes for Thinknum. “Texture is described as the ‘Netflix of publishing’ in that it gives users access to multiple magazines from major publishers for a flat fee per month.”
Fruhlinger writes, “But there has also been more recent buzz that Apple is aiming to create its own editorial content outside of aggregators like it currently does with Apple News and Texture.”
“Hiring activity trends that we disovered in our Apple job-listing time series’ shows cyclical hiring efforts for skilled editorial positions following a noted developmental-hire peak last summer,” Fruhlinger writes. “In other words, it looks as though Apple brought on a team to re-develop the Apple News application and followed that with an acute editorial hiring phase to begin creating original content… Those jobs, as of today, include titles such as ‘Politics Editor,’ ‘Business Editor,’ ‘US Editor (London Based) Apple News,’ and more… Sounds like a real news room to us.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Another source of “news” added to the mix would certainly be welcome.
One concern, of course, remains:
Apple CEO Cook: ‘Fake news’ is ‘killing people’s minds’ – February 11, 2017
“Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, is calling for governments to launch a public information campaign to fight the scourge of fake news, which is ‘killing people’s minds,'” Allister Heath reports for The Telegraph. “In an impassioned plea, Mr Cook, boss of the world’s largest company, says that the epidemic of false reports ‘is a big problem in a lot of the world’ and necessitates a crackdown by the authorities and technology firms.”
“‘It has to be ingrained in the schools, it has to be ingrained in the public,’ said Mr Cook. ‘There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic… We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will,'” Heath reports. “‘We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth,’ he said. ‘It’s killing people’s minds in a way.'”
“Tech firms, which have been criticised for doing too little, also need to up their game, he said. ‘All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader. Too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do,'” Heath reports. “‘The [rise of fake news] is a short-term thing – I don’t believe that people want that at the end of the day,’ [Cook said]. A new approach was required in schools, he said. ‘It’s almost as if a new course is required for the modern kid, for the digital kid.’ But he is optimistic. ‘In some ways kids will be the easiest to educate. At least before a certain age, they are very much in listen and understand [mode], and they then push their parents to act.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Our Take, from that February 11, 2017 article:
Who determines what’s “real” news and what’s “fake?”
Anyone who’s been paying any attention for the last, oh, forever (unlike Cook, who inexplicably thinks this is a “short-term thing”) can cite examples of so-called news that are biased one way or the other. In fact, history is littered with examples where the the facts were altered to suit a specific purpose.
We reread The Telegraph‘s full article six times. Is Cook really saying that the authorities and technology firms need to get the kids indoctrinated while they’re still malleable? If not, what did we miss?
And, are these the same technology firms who donated 60 times more to one party than to the other in the last U.S. Presidential election? If you don’t find that idea chilling, just imagine these “authorities and technology firms” — oh, let’s just call them “Ministry of Truth” (it has a nicer ring to it) — on the side of those espousing ideas that you oppose instead.
In the U.S., for a Democrat, “real” news is MSNBC and “fake” news is Fox News. For a Republican, it’s exactly the opposite. We’re sure it’s similar in every country with a “free press” in the world.
Again, who determines what’s “real” news and what’s “fake?” Cook seems to want “technology companies'” idea of what’s “real” to be “ingrained in the schools” and “ingrained in the public.” Technology companies, again, who donated 99% of their political dollars to one party in the last U.S. Presidential election.
If this is really what Cook desires then… Wow. Just wow.
Oh, good, it’s time for one of those “public service announcements” that Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned. This one is from the 1940s:
That’s right, at one time, smoking was considered healthy and even said to prevent various illnesses. “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette,” dontcha know?
Telling “the most truth,” no doubt. “Ingrained in the schools, ingrained in the public.” “Killing people’s minds” …via their lungs.
And now for some quotes from George Orwell’s 1984 (you know, the one upon which Apple once based a TV commercial):
• The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.
• Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
• Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
• So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.
• The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
• Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
• And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
We’re going to hope and pray that Cook was misquoted and/or taken wildly out of context in this report.
One more quote: Think Different.
SEE ALSO:
Apple is rumored to be eying Condé Nast acquisition – May 1, 2018
Amazon considered buying Texture before Apple bit – March 13, 2018
Apple pushes deeper into news – March 13, 2018
Apple to acquire Next Issue Media and its digital magazine-subscription service Texture – March 12, 2018
Silicon Valley donated 60 times more to Clinton than to Trump – November 7, 2016
99% of Silicon Valley’s political dollars are going to Hillary Clinton – October 25, 2016
Apple refuses to aid 2016 GOP presidential convention over Trump comments – June 18, 2016
Apple and Silicon Valley employees love Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump? Not so much – May 6, 2016
As long as Apple dont clutter and makes a mess that is iTunes
MDN excellent take on 1984.
Apple will succeed beyond expectation only if it is successful at replacing the compromised Intel chips with its own and only if its own has not been backdoored.
Still waiting for Apple News to be available on Macs rather than just on IOS. I read much of my other news sources on my Mac but can only read Apple News on my iPad or iPhone.
Fake News does exist but common usage in the age of Trump is not really accurate. What Trump employs is commonly called Gaslighting. Real Fake News is disinformation related to the military art of PsyOps.
In our current world more grads of Journalism Schools are employed as PR people than as working journalists and they are very different roles despite overlapping skill sets. One is putting the best face on what you have to sell and the other is presenting the unvarnished facts at hand.
I would also object to the false equivalence of Fox News and MSNBC. MSNBC is a general news channel subject to the content standards of NBC News. Fox is unabashedly and unapologetically the idea of GOP TV realized- essentially opinion radio translated to TV under the guise of journalism. With the exception of prime time opinion shows, MSNBC is nothing more or less than a cable version of NBC News. Fox, with few exceptions, is all opinion shows.
MSNBC and NBC News are hardly Center Left- they are Centrist to Center Right. Comcast is a tightly controlled company and the Roberts family is well known to be quite conservative. Comcast owns MSNBC and NBC.
You’re a blind idiot who cannot see beyond your own warped, leftist idealogical veil.
use his typical juvenile “Drumpf” to describe his president. He asserted earlier that he researches everything thoroughly, so what he says in the post above must be true.
How would you presume to know any of that.
The media is biased- toward the corporate owners.
Corporate is neither Democratic or Republican. They are the money party and money runs both of them.
The Media Research Center studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the President from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative.
For this report, MRC analysts examined all 1,065 network evening news stories about President Trump and top members of his administration during the first four months of this year. The coverage totaled a whopping 1,774 minutes, or roughly one-third of all evening news airtime.
For comparison, in 2015 and 2016, coverage of President Obama amounted to just ten percent of all evening news airtime.
Of the 542 opinionated statements involving a policy matter, 440 (81%) were negative for President Trump, compared with just 102 (19%) which were positive.
There’s no precedent for a President receiving such a sustained level of negative press over such a long period of time. The fact that the public has become more favorable towards the President in this environment is the latest sign that the media watchdog’s bite isn’t as menacing as their bark suggests.
In the face of massive and hostile coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC, Trump’s overall job approval rating actually rose, from 37 percent in mid-December to roughly 43 percent at the end of April.
Oh DavGreg. One thing is for sure… it is anything but lonely in your bubble.
Not in a bubble.
Fox is still ranting about Hillary Clinton who is not in public office and will never be President.
What is amazing about the Conservative Bubble is the willful ignorance. When Major Garrett was at Fox he was the fount of accuracy & now that he is at CBS he is suspect as part of the supposedly liberal media. The inverse is true of John Roberts who left CBS for Fox. Same for Chris Wallace who has worked for CBS (WBBM Chicago), NBC and ABC News prior to going to Fox.
I doubt these people changed their politics when they changed jobs, yet the Republican meme about a liberal biased media persists among the poorly educated and willfully blind. Millionaire Reporters and Anchors are far from some Left Wing type that rarely get on air on any channel.
Yes, deep in a bubble. Read @First 2014, Then 2016 post is all you need to know CONFIRMING LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS …
“MSNBC and NBC News are hardly Center Left- they are Centrist to Center Right.”
The STUPIDEST thing you ever said!
DG, you keep pushing this FALSE MEME there is NO LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS and only a Republican bias at Fox. How BLIND can you be???
MSNBC Is Left to batsh*t uber out of control Left. NBC is center to Liberal Left, a bit more constrained but still a liberal network known for false reporting of Republicans.
You also keep pushing the other false meme that somehow the politics of the owner mean something. Means absolutely NOTHING! Money is green politics and all that counts to owners.
So, pretty please stop posting FAKE NEWS. You know absolutely NOTHING regarding media bias and it painfully shows. My unsolicited advice stick to the topics you excel at and there are many. This is not one of them, SORRY my friend …
he’s just a Democratic Socialist, DaveG says. Govt jobs for all, free college, min wage @ $15 to start, govt health care. Let’s just say centralized economy is good.
We might also say that Bernie likes the sound of Vlad’s proclamation…”the goal of socialism is communism.” I know, it’s just Democratic Socialism w/ a little centralized in there for a hopeful future.
No wonder DaveG thinks NBC is non-biased, or center-right. Wait, he actually said “NBC is center-right?” Is CNN center and non-biased as well?
DaveG, what do you think about the Media Research Center’s points? Invalid b/c of source, or?
This morning I learned that Tim Cook wants a ministry of truth.
( Ministry of Truth, shortened to Minitrue, dealing with history, art, news, and education. The Ministry of Truth is a propaganda machine. The irony is that all it does is lie. ) The Ministry of truth is from Orwell’s 1984 -just in case you didn’t know as I’m finding that the younger people are the less likely it is they’ve read it.
I also learned that President Trump will be pursuing term limits for both houses of Congress. “…The idea behind term limits is fairly straightforward: to cut down on the number of career politicians, bringing new blood and ideas into Congress. The goal being to return to citizen legislators, not career politicians more invested in protecting the “swamp” and the status quo than representing their constituents…”
Trump sounds far more rational and a far better judge of what is good for the nation than Tim Cook.
And that’s just today.
I favor career legislators over naive ones who can be easily swayed by entrenched career staff who then become relatively more and more powerful because their years in gov. have allowed them to learn how to navigate and manipulate the levers of big gub’mnt more effectively. This is why term limits limit the knowledge and effectiveness of elected officials. I favor elected officials over non-elected apparatchiks who some call the “Deep State”.
I think those experienced guys like the candies (get swayed) that are passed out by the men with long dark coats (lobbyists). The experienced use their experience to experience greater $$.
That said, term limits can cause the inexperienced to misstep in the way mentioned…just for one.
Very well said, TMac.
Cook has proven over and over all he cares about are 100% liberal SJW causes and I’ll prove it. When was the last time he was at a Second Amendment rally? Right to Life rally? Photographed with his significant other coming out of church on Christmas or Easter?
Hell, he snubbed all gun supporters by removing the pistol emoji and replacing it with a green plastic squirt gun. Terribly insulting to most of Americans and he does not care when insulting anyone that is not from the Left.
Bottom line: He will do the same with the news service and in an overcrowded field of liberal biased media today, who needs it?
That being said, if he hired roughly 40% Democrat, 40% Republican and 20% Independent journalists, that would be the start of new media journalism. And just then, I woke up …
Begin with commercial ads. The ad is the origin of fake news. That’s where Fox News and others learned how to combine news with drama with bias. Yes, bias is fake news. But, you know, no one wants to merely read news facts; People want to be entertained which is what Fox News is. Therefore, I think that clampdown on fake news will result only in censorship and an increasing amount of media slanted toward what the dominant news reformers want to publish. I say, keep things as they are. Let the intellectual marketplace decide what it wants to consume.
This is just a rehash of propaganda, heck one of the most hilarious fake news events that I can recall was this amazing weapons of mass destruction program that some country said that Iraq had. They pushed the idea all the way to the United Nations, who were going to hold a democratic vote on it, a dilemma for country on its way to embrace terrorism that decided to go on their own.
Of course it may be that there is weapons of mass destruction program but by the time they find it it may not matter much, nobody is going to be left to run it, at the rate genocide is going on over there.
Road Warrior is the terminally obsessed TORTURE SPECIALIST POSTER on MDN. Incurable, tone deaf, petulant, self righteous and totally SICKENING. Take it elsewhere…
it’s similar to the kid with dreams of the big leagues, but he just doesn’t “have it.” He continues on with his dream at everyone else’s expense.
He can simply STOP. The dream is dead end, kid. Or banned for being a daily and annoying torture plague on readers. Either one works for me …