Here's the NYT:
The Register, of course, is trying some massive spin:An article in Business Day on Tuesday described a decision by Microsoft to offer movies and episodes of television shows for downloading through its Xbox Live online service in the United States.
The article quoted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, discussing the features that set Xbox Live service apart and its position in the market. But the article did not note that Mr. Enderle had Microsoft as a client, a fact later pointed out by a reader. Mr. Enderle does consulting work for several of Microsoft's product groups, though not for the one developing the Xbox; still, had The Times known of Mr. Enderle's work for Microsoft, it would not have sought out his opinion on the product.
And here's Shillo McOpinions-for-sale himself:NY Times bans Microsoft analysts from Microsoft stories
When it feels like it
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View → More by this author
Published Friday 15th December 2006 19:32 GMT
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The New York Times continues to perplex with its analyst-quoting policy. Rather than having analysts declare their ties to clients, the paper would prefer to quote analysts that have no experience with a client - a protocol which seems to undermine the very point of citing analysts.
The Register this week started pushing the Times to explain its quoting stance after noticing that Rob Enderle - the most quoted technology analyst on the planet - had been blocked from commenting on companies with which he has a financial relationship. The ban against Enderle appeared odd, given that Times reporters continue to cite analysts from larger firms who also have financial relationships with the companies discussed.
Times spokeswoman Abbe Serphos explained:
To maintain impartiality in its coverage, The Times tries to avoid quoting analysts who have an obvious business relationship with a company on, say, new products of that company.
Ideally, the analysts should be from a firm that does not have that company as a client. If the analyst is one of many in a large firm that does have the company as a client, the analyst quoted should not be one directly involved with that company's products.
A couple of things in that statement stand out.
For one, the paper only tries not to quote analysts who have business ties to a vendor. It's missing a firm policy.
Secondly, the flimsy policy prohibits reporters from querying those analysts that would seem to know their subjects best. In a story about Microsoft, a reporter should apparently quote an analyst who covers LSI Logic or orange juice makers, not one who covers Microsoft.
A better policy might insist that the Times disclose the ties between an analyst and a vendor, leaving the reader to make the credibility judgement.
As it stands, objective Times reporters must not form opinions about the companies they cover and must then quote analysts who don't cover the companies for opinions. That seems more like praying for accuracy than pursuing it.
The funny - or sad - thing is that the paper doesn't come close to following its own advice.
Just days after banning Enderle from discussing Microsoft because he has Microsoft as a client, the Times quoted Gartner analyst Michael Silver and AMR Research analyst Jim Murphy in a story about Microsoft's Windows and Office software.
If the paper would prefer not to quote an analyst who has experience with a client, it did a poor job. Silver is Gartner's vice president in charge of client computing. Microsoft happens to do lots of business with Gartner and also happens to have a client-software monopoly. We're guessing that Silver knows Microsoft's products well and has direct involvement with the company.
And, sure enough, he appears a number of times on Microsoft's own site and thousands of times in stories about Microsoft.
Jim Murphy - wait for it - covers Microsoft too and is even more prolific than Silver.
Both analysts, however, should hang their heads in shame because Enderle has ten times the Microsoft opining skills.
Since the Times can't follow its own policy, it should come as no surprise that other publications have shunned the Gray Lady as a standards setter. Rob Enderle this week made it into 51 stories - and counting - about Microsoft. ComputerWorld, InformationWeek, PC World, MarketWatch and InternetNews.com all quoted the analyst without ever touching on his relationship with Microsoft.
We can't quite tell why financial analysts have to disclose their ties to vendors, while technology analysts don't.
Part of the problem stems from the reticence of companies such as IDC and Gartner to reveal their clients. That should make everyone nervous, but it doesn't. So called objective technology publications keep publishing material bought by vendors without telling you this. They're also too lazy or scared to ignore the likes of Gartner and IDC until the firms change their disclosure rules.
As it turns out, there's a cottage industry devoted to Rob Enderle, where Linux zealots fire off this form letter to editors whenever Enderle appears talking about Microsoft. Perhaps the Linux crowd could put its fabled collective mind toward creating letters for all the major analysts. Lord knows, the Times could use some help. ®
All in all, Comedy Gold. Now all we need is for Forbes to fire Dan Lyons and have George Ou and Paul Thurrot eaten by rabid weasels, and all would be well in the IT-commenting world.Rob Enderle weighs in on NY Times ban
They need help
By Rob Enderle → More by this author
Published Monday 18th December 2006 18:31 GMT
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Comment Ashlee, I read you piece (NY Times bans Microsoft analysts from Microsoft stories) over the weekend and man did you hit a chord with me. I sweat this stuff. I’m accused quite often of being a Microsoft shill and, as you point out, there is actually a cottage industry that has cropped up making that accusation to keep me from saying anything negative about OSS (open source software) or Apple. Since I’ve been doing the analyst thing for well over a decade, I think most journalists know I answer questions as honestly as I can and, while I do make mistakes, they are honest ones.
But the big firms are under heavy financial strain from the Internet. More and more IT shops are coming to the conclusion that they don’t need to buy research from a large firm because they can get the same data, or sometimes even better data, off of the web. Vendors are getting tired of being blackmailed into buying consulting and services they don’t need, and many of the more experienced analysts have either opened their own practices or have gone to work for the vendors or IT shops who then, and you can understand this, feel little need to work with the remaining junior folks.
It used to be that there was a hard break between the analysts and vendors, but with increasing revenue pressures a substantial (20 per cent to 50 per cent) of their income now comes from consulting and the majority of that is with vendors. Vendors don’t like to consult with folks that are negative about their offerings. It puts the analyst in a horrid conflict of interest and the reason I created the “bad report” service, which has never actually been used, was to offset an increasing practice of using negative reports to “encourage” vendors to buy research and consulting.
With regard to disclosing clients, I do that on my web site, but don’t on my columns anymore. Like you, I thought the idea was a good one and Ziff Davis agreed (this is where you’ll see it was tried). But if I was negative about Open Source or Apple, instead of people being grateful for the disclosure, it actually fueled the fire and folks went ballistic threatening to boycott my clients or worse, and you’ll notice that Ziff generally doesn’t do the disclosure thing anymore as a result (it looks like they have actually removed it from many of my old pieces).;
Ziff, like most of the folks I work with now, wanted controversial pieces and it wasn’t in either of our interest to make it look like the pieces were vendor directed (the goal was generally to drive web traffic but the opinion remained my own). I did really like that Acer Ferrari notebook, and it drove a lot of my peers nuts (and some still give me good natured grief about it). I get excited about cool hardware and have a passion for it; folks seem to like it when I write about things I’m passionate about. Go figure.
Even with the Ziff experience, when the Times brought it up, I said I had no problem if they treated all of the other analysts the same way. I simply didn’t want to be singled out again and most of us have as clients the companies we are most conversant with. More important, I was aware that about a decade ago the firms put a lot of the independents out of business by spreading the rumor that the independents couldn’t be trusted and I really didn’t, for obvious reasons, want to do the same thing myself.
I do think, however, that if an analyst has consulted on a project that the reporter is asking about they should disclose that because they may be critiquing their own work and if the analyst has an investment in the company that should be disclosed as well for obvious reasons.
Paul Gillin, who weighed in on this subject as well and later did a quick search on how many times the New York Times quoted the Aberdeen Group after their business model was outed by the Wall Street Journal in 2002.
I honestly don’t know what the right answer is here. When I write, I like to pick controversial topics which means it isn’t unusual for me to get folks excited. The end result is also my work and not my words supporting someone else’s (a lot of folks don’t fact check in context anymore and that can be problematic for me). All I can say is; I do my best when called by a reporter or client to answer a question in the most complete and honest way I can. When I first started out, the news services actually paid for this. Now I support them because it helps me think through issues (and I enjoy it), they actually give me great market intelligence, and it showcases that I am capable (at least some of the time) of giving good answers to complex questions.;
You’d think the Times would have had enough controversy about their credibility. I guess not, well at least the Washington Post is happy.
From the heart I really appreciate your doing this and if we can get some consistency in the process and maybe get folks asking the right questions about vendors and analysts, I honestly think things will improve for my industry, I know they would improve for the New York Times.
Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group