Screw You, Gizmodo
I wasn’t planning on saying anything here about the recent iPhone leak and Gizmodo’s handling of it. In my opinion, Gizmodo reporting on the iPhone was something that was well within their rights.
But last night, Gizmodo (I’m not linking to it as I don’t want to reward their behavior) posted an article on the Apple engineer who allegedly left the phone at a bar. In the article, they revealed his name, his photo and even parts of a conversation that they had with him. And then earlier today, they posted another article with portions of his Twitter stream and more details, including that it was his birthday when the phone was lost. At this point, it appears that Gizmodo just doesn’t care that we are talking about an actual human being here and has instead decided to go for pageviews at all costs.
I’m am very disappointed to see Gizmodo stoop to this level — I would expect this from a supermarket tabloid when talking about a celebrity or a politician. But this is very different — we are talking about a man who made a serious mistake in his career, but also hasn’t stepped onto the public stage. I don’t think anybody wants to have Gizmodo following them around paparazzi style, reporting on everything they do to the world. Politicians and celebrities also don’t want this constant attention, but they willingly stepped into the public eye.
Ask anyone who’s ever worked in an industry where you are creating something new — software, hardware, designer, entertainment, it goes on and on — if they’ve ever made a mistake and accidentally screwed up somewhere along the line and inadvertently released some detail about what they were working on. I’m betting that most people have. And those that say no are either lying or haven’t been doing it long enough. Mistakes happen. Most won’t be at the level this man made, but that doesn’t excuse Gizmodo for publicly attacking him via their website.
That’s just wrong and Gizmodo needs to come out and apologize for this behavior.
