Sure the byline reads, Michael V. Copeland, Business 2.0 Magazine senior writer, but the article On the Launchpad: Unlocking the iPod is written like a self-congratulatory shill piece typically pumped out by over paid PR firms that Astroturf the news outlets. Minor massaging it is no different than this piece found over at MacNN. Hell, just Google for it and you’ll see close variations on a theme. From business to politics to health-care to world events this type of mouthpiece writing is prevalent and it does a disservice to the consumer of the news. Then again, if you follow the money, who is the real customer?

Not you and not me. The real customers are the ones paying for the placement of these pieces and they are paying for readership. It is the same model as broadcast television where the viewing public is the product and the customer is the advertisers, same model as Google AdWords. So what bothers me about this more than advertising? PR is insidious in that it clothes itself the trappings of authority and responsibility alluding to the notion of substance. Advertising is much more easily spotted in that it does not often pretend that it is any more than what it is, though there are exceptions it is less disturbing and damaging than PR which inserts itself in and amongst items that might actually be news.

PR pieces are laudatory and do not ask the obvious and sometimes difficult to answer questions. In the case of Navio that would be, “How is this different than every other closed source solution that has preceded it?”, “So, tell me, I’m going have to buy yet another device for playback of music and movies?”, “Great, another phone-home solution that will also act as a layer between me and my hardware and likely cause nothing but headaches when I want to burn a CD of photos from my kids first birthday. Why?”  I suppose that I ask too much from the Fourth Estate.
To Navio, the PR machine, and all the news outlets that run this crap without asking the tough as well as easy questions, I say screw you.