★ A Postscript on the Singular Nature of Mark Gurman’s Reporting

My post Friday commenting (read: wise-cracking) on Mark Gurman’s explosive report on an all-hands Siri team meeting at Apple was begging for a bit of meta commentary on the reporting itself. But I’ve been doing so much of that regarding Gurman lately that I thought it best to hold it for a postscript. Here’s the that postscript.

Both of these things are true:

• Mark Gurman is a singular reporter in the Apple media sphere. He publishes an extraordinary number of exclusives, both regarding leaks of upcoming products, and leaks like this Siri team meeting.
• Gurman often gets things wrong, and when he does, he never acknowledges those mistakes, let alone corrects them. He also tries to take credit for having called things he completely missed. He’s not an oracle but presents himself as one. And he writes for a publication, Bloomberg, that shares his insistence on never acknowledging let alone correcting mistakes, even massive ones. What gives me such joy pointing out his boners isn’t that he made them in first place but that he refuses to acknowledge they happened, presenting an air of infallibility with a provably fallible track record.

In short, I do actually suspect — but can claim zero sources familiar with the matter to confirm — that Gurman hangs his toilet paper in an improper underhand fashion.

So let’s just examine how extraordinary and singular Gurman’s Friday report was. Nobody else reported on this meeting. Every other article about it — including mine — was commenting on Gurman’s exclusive report about the meeting. I’ve not seen one other report even confirming the meeting took place, let alone describing it in detail, replete with copious quotes from Siri senior director Robby Walker, who, according to Gurman, led the meeting. No other news report even confirmed the meeting took place. Not one. I’m not pointing that out to cast suspicion that the meeting did not take place or that Gurman’s report cast it inaccurately or that his direct quotations were not, in fact, direct quotations. I’m pointing just how singular and extraordinary Mark Gurman is in this sphere. If it wasn’t for Gurman’s report we, outside Apple (and probably outside the Siri team inside Apple) wouldn’t even know the meeting occurred.

How did Gurman not only get the scoop on this meeting, but copious direct quotes from Walker’s remarks to the team? Well, it was “according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the gathering was private”. In other words, more than one member of the Siri team, and at least one of which either recorded the meeting surreptitiously and slipped the recording to Gurman, or at least one of whom takes notes at the pace and accuracy of a court stenographer. Either way, these sources — plural — surely knew how damning the meeting would make Apple look.

I’ve long made my opinions about Bloomberg’s institutional journalistic credibility well known. But I don’t think they’re bereft of credibility — it’s the fact that they are deservedly well-regarded that makes their refusal to ever admit their own glaring mistakes so glaring. When a Gurman reports says “people” that means “more than one” and, I believe, he needs to confirm to his editors that he got this information from more than one source. If he’s reporting direct quotes, I think that means he’s heard a recording. That’s extraordinary.

But I’d feel a lot better about our collective conventional wisdom regarding the nature of this particular all-hands Siri meeting if it had leaked to, and been reported on, by more than one reporter at more than one publication.