By Graham K. Rogers

Having been a professional writer for over 3 years - policeman, academic and newspaper columnist - as well as being a teacher of writing, Truth has a high level of importance for me. It is important in what I write, but has just as large a significance in what I read.

The internet has seem a huge increase in the number of writers whose work is now available for anyone to read. As advertising revenue has gained importance, especially for those who need the income (such as those transitioning from print media), so the need for more hits has grown.

Headlines are an important way to catch the eye of a potential reader and daily there are several cringe-worthy examples. One of the ways many sites draw in readers is the inclusion of the word, Apple in the heading (or the text). The story may hav little or nothing to do with Cupertino, but "such as Apple" is good enough for many it seems. Cheap, crass, but sort of acceptable these days.

What is less acceptable is the invention of fact, which in some quarters is called by the real word, lying. Halfway through writing last Friday's Cassandra Review, I came across two pieces about Pegatron, one of Apple's suppliers. On the one hand, we were told that "Falling iPad Mini Demand" was to push "Pegatron Electronics Sales Down", while in another report I read that Pegatron was recruiting 40,000 new workers. I went to bed Thursday night troubled at the juxtaposition.

Overnight, Philip Elmer-DeWitt did some detective work as he was troubled by the use of a quote, part of which was not in speech marks. Tim Culpan, Bloomberg's correspondent had added information that was not in the Pegatron CEO's original quote. To confirm, Elmer-DeWitt checked the source, something that few journalists do, although many covering the story took Bloomberg's article as a trusted source. That is now questioned by some.

The reply from Jason Cheng confirmed that not only was the addition of information about the iPad mini wrong, but that the reporter had specifically asked about this and Cheng wrote, "I clearly refused to comment on specific products, nor customers, even though he continued with other questions."

Needless to say, several sources picked up on this, some correcting their earlier Bloomberg-inspired output, others tut-tutting in print. In Cassandra I wrote, "I would expect some fallout from this in the next few days." I was wrong. The original report dated 8 May remains online with no correction and no retraction, despite more than 72 hours in which the comments of Philip Elmer-DeWitt and many readers of the article have pointed out the errors. There were no changes up to the time I put this article online.

However, Bloomberg does not stop there and two other articles appear to hint at a bias against Apple. Philip Elmer-DeWitt, in a 11 May article titled, "Bloomberg's lazy Apple bias" points out the sensationalist nature of an article by Michael McDonald concerning investment and Apple. Shares in the company had begun to rise after several weeks of massive losses (in the share price, not Apple) partly brought about by negative reporting.

In the Bloomberg piece, McDonald writes in his opening, after a similarly lurid headline, "Harvard University, the world's wealthiest university, has liquidated its stake in Apple Inc. as the iPhone maker's shares tumbled after reaching a record high of $702.10 in September." It is now May of course.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out that rather than this being a sensation, Harvard's holding was 571 shares: value $304,000. McDonald does have that, but the headline and the opening have already drawn readers in, when all that is involved is "0.03% of the university's $30.7 billion endowment" according to Elmer-deWitt, who also mentioned that the $42.3 liquidation of Warnaco Group holdings was not headline grabbing. Or not headline-grabbing enough.

Between the two articles above was a shock article by Michelle Fay Cortez on the dangers of the iPad for heart patients as discovered by a 14-year old schoolgirl from California: "Heart Patient Risk From iPad2 Found by 14-Year-Old". Although from reading the article, one would not guess until way down the page that this is the cover and not the iPad itself.

It is also apparent in the article that this is a concern when defibrillators are in use. An Apple spokesperson is quoted in the article who refers to the online guide, but Cortez does not quote from this directly. Steven Sande on TUAW does.

He writes that the problem was not discovered by the 14-year-old as Cortez suggests and does quote from the iPad user guide, "where the warning is plainly written".

To be fair to Chien, her science project was a survey done with some assistance from her father who is a cardiac electrophysiologist, so might have some inside knowledge. As Steven Sande writes, "If Chien should be lauded for anything, it's waking the public up to actually reading those user guides and safety warnings that we all ignore on a regular basis."

Not, as Cortez claimed, for discovering a previously unknown problem (as that is what "discovery" implies).

With these biases outlined above, I am beginning to lose faith in what Bomberg reports, particularly when it comes to Apple; however, the trust factor may go deeper as in an item by Adi Robertson on The Verge it is reported that the expensive Bloomberg terminals that Wall Street and others in the financial world rely on, have been routinely used by Bloomberg reporters, to "track when investors were logging into the terminals, as well as what they were doing. . . ."

The fault that allowed this access had existed since the 1990s, but only when there was a public revelation of this online spying did Boomberg finally get round to cutting off the reporters' links.

[Update: in an article on Huffington Post, Matthew Winkler - Bloomberg Editor in Chief - apologises and explains how the access to customer terminals occurred and what has been done about it, affirming Bloomberg's commitment to quality reporting. As yet, the article by Tim Culpan has not been corrected or withdrawn.] A company's reputation depends on trust.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.