Steve Jobs ordered Apple ads off Fox News

As relates to his previously documented loathing of Fox News, it's now known that the late Steve Jobs backed up his harsh words by wisely withholding Apple's advertising dollars, according to an upcoming book about the 2012 presidential campaign.

The book's author, Jonathan Alter, a Bloomberg political columnist and contributor to MSNBC, tells of Jobs "personally ordering that Apple ads be removed from Fox News," according to a blog post in the New York Times over the weekend. Alter's book, "The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies," is scheduled to hit stores June 4.

That the Apple co-founder held Fox News in low regard has been publicly known since the publication of Walter Isaacson's authorized biography in October 2011. Here's the key passage recounting a conversation Jobs had with Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., which owns Fox News:

"You're blowing it with Fox News," Jobs told him over dinner. "The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you've cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you're not careful." Jobs said he thought Murdoch did not really like how far Fox had gone. "Rupert's a builder, not a tearer-downer," he said. "I've had some meetings with (Murdoch's son) James, and I think he agrees with me. I can just tell."

While there's little reason to believe Jobs was right about the Murdochs' reticence, his decision to protect the invaluable Apple brand from being tarnished by association with Fox News was one that others would do well to emulate today. A quick look at FoxNews.com shows the likes of Sprint, Nuance, Mercedes-Benz, Nstar and New Relic failing to take the same care with their corporate names.

And another Fox advertiser, curiously enough, is the Public Broadcasting System ... but at least PBS may have something of a valid reason to do business with an organization that is dedicated to seeing public television destroyed: PBS is advertising its upcoming miniseries called "Constitution USA" hosted by Peter Sagal. Now if only those who run and watch Fox News would actually watch.

(Update: An anonymous commenter on Reddit offers: "I'm a media buyer and I know that MANY blue chip companies have Fox News on their do-not-use list including a couple of Apple's biggest competitors.")

You bought the overpriced Mac. I’ve never bought an Apple Product and never will. But worship what and who you will. Freedom of religion is a principle of America. Or it used to be.

Depending on who’s doing the math, Macs have been overpriced - or Windows PCs haven't delivered the value because of their ridiculous vulnerability to viruses. Compared to OS X, which is built on Unix - an OS which was built from the ground up to provide a stable platform for each user in a multiuser environment. And whether we think we like it or not, when we are online we are in a multiuser environment.
I use a Mac, and I ignore all breathless warnings that the sky is falling and my Mac is being compromised by viruses. Is that stupid? Yeah, it is possible that one day the sky will fall - but in the meantime I know that if I allow myself to be stampeded by every alarum, I will sucker for a Trojan Horse. I know that, because I have already done it once, back when I had a PC. And the vector the trojan horse used was precisely my fear of viruses. The Mac is vulnerable to the trojan horse, because the trojan horse attacks the user, not the machine. The Mac is vulnerable to a trojan horse because every computer is, if it provides the user with any flexibility at all.

In saying that, I am struck with the thought that the “virus” or “trojan horse" paradigm applies perfectly to “the MSM” (or, as I’ve begun to refer to it, “Conspiracy Journalism”). Society (not government, society) constructed a communication system, which can be viewed as a prototype of a computer. Initially it consisted of a bunch of independent printers publishing newspapers. Those printers communicated to the public, and also communicated with each other (in part through the medium of government-subsidized mailing of newspapers amongst themselves). The individual printers were nodes in the system. The system developed tremendously with the advent of the telegraph in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The medium, hardware wise, was the telegraph - but in software, the medium was the Associated Press.
Originally the nodes of the system, the individual printers, placed their stamp firmly on the entire paper - the papers were small, they published relatively infrequently, and the papers were about the opinions of their printers as much as they were about the news. A lot like talk radio, for example. But since the printing presses were write-only, they naturally were primarily useful to the printer as a way of publishing their ideas. Inherently, the readers are - readers, and write little, and what they do write is at the sufferance of the printer as to whether it gets a wide audience.
The AP, though, was a new way for the reporters of a given newspaper to get more audience. In conjunction with the AP, high-speed printing presses (even more write-only, for the printers, and even more read-only, for the audience) created the modern newspaper with AP content from far-flung sources. What could go wrong?
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)
What went wrong with the PC was that it was designed for a single user, with no robustness to the possibility that others than the owner would have the ability to induce processes which were intended for the parasitic external “user” rather than, or even in opposition to, the owner of the PC. We call them viruses or trojans. The owner, as he conceives himself, of the individual PC in the network finds his PC to be part of something which he does not, and cannot expect to, fully understand. The news consumer, likewise, thinks he is buying something he is in control of but which, with all its nodes, has hidden agendas within it of which the news consumer/voter may be dimly aware of or totally ignorant. Your “argument” is the equivalent of a liberal calling a conservative a racist. Possibly there’s some truth in the charge, because there’s plenty of human fallibility to go around. But it’s irrelevant to the point under discussion, and a clear indication that the conservative has made his point.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.