Instead of looking at conspiracies at the Times and Fox News, maybe we should focus on the apparent laziness at the AP. I swear most of their stories seem lifted directly from press releases. I used to think it was just their political reporting that would skew to whatever direction their interviewee leaned, but man, this article about Apple’s new OS is, well, fawning. And fawning in a “I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but this is what they told me” kind of way. I don’t think Apple’s marketing department could’ve written the thing better.

Then again, in a world where we have fun things like video news releases (VNRs) produced by CNN, the “Most Trusted Name in News,” maybe I shouldn’t be so glib about the quality of the AP.

Also, I’m not saying that stories can’t be glowingly positive without seeming hackish. It’s the glowingly positive and over-the-top expectations of things like Spotlight that cross the line into hackishness. For example, Spotlight, cool as it is, has costs (e.g. disk, cpu). Also, Apple likes to claim “200 new features” when many of them are, well, not very noteworthy. I don’t think we count new toolbar buttons as a new feature when evaluating, say, Microsoft Office.

Not that I’m poo-pooing Spotlight or Tiger, but I’m just not so excited about articles like this…