Like in the past week I've come across several different instances of media talking about "ebooks"
and ebook readers.
Makes me wonder....
It's really not much of a mystery - most product rollouts hire a press agent whose entire job it is to land media coverage. I'm sure Jeff Bezos from Amazon spared no expense on that front. And this is sort of a standard media narrative - here's the new little gadget that's going to change everything forever. Sometimes it's true, as in the case of the iPod, other times, well... anyone remember how the Segway was supposed to be the new internet?
It's standard operating procedure, but it gets really bad when news organizations, who are operating with lower and lower overhead, just pop the press release into a slot and call it an article or segment. If you never want to trust the media again, just Google the initials "VNR," or video news release - these are fake news items made by PR lacks that are often aired by local TV news affiliates as if they were produced by the show.
