Yahoo's Anti-Press Decision Is Bad PR
from the looks-bad dept
A lot of news organizations are picking up on the story that Yahoo is not letting reporters in to this Friday's annual shareholders meeting. Yahoo claims they've never allowed reporters in and mention that some other Silicon Valley companies do the same. When asked who, they said Sun and Cisco, though both those companies deny such practices - and Yahoo later said that they really made that up in the first place anyway. It's definitely in their right to do so, but their reaction to the press questioning it makes them look stupid, and turns what's really a non-story into a story that's getting covered everywhere. They should have just shut up and let the reporters in, and no one would have even noticed. Instead, it looks like they've got something to hide.
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Another perspective
The reporters would then get into such a tizzy about violating their objective perspective, but it would drive home the point that since reporters typically have no vested interest in a company, there is no downside for them in trashing a stock unduly. However, on the flipside, reporters who pump a stock unduly tend to ultimately suffer blows to their reputation. Thus there is, I believe (but could never prove) an inherent pessimism to "objective" reporting.
Question for the audience (or at least Mike) is whether stock ownership changes the balance in the other direction or neutralizes it toward true objectivity or tanks the balance toward pessimism?
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Re: Another perspective
Then, if you're a reader/investor or whatever, to look for multiple opinions on a topic, and use that to zero in on what might be a more "objective" opinion as you take into account each reporter/analysts own biases.
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Re: Another perspective
Anyway, I believe some reporters would consciously try to check themselves. Some would succeed, some would fail, and some wouldn't even try in the first place. It depends on their morals, ethics, and writing methodologies.
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