The perils of reporting on Steve Jobs' health
Getting the kind of information about Steve Jobs' health that Apple's (AAPL) investors and customers deserve is tricky, as tech reporters discovered to their peril this week.
The sources in the best position to talk about Jobs' medical condition — which forced him to announce Wednesday that he taking a six-month medical leave — are his physicians, and they're prevented by doctor-patient confidentiality from disclosing what they know.
Everybody else is either speculating, spinning or being spun.
Even Jobs' own statements are suspect. He has issued two e-mail medical dispatches in the past two weeks that are not only vague and lacking in hard medical information, but contradictory — moving in the space of 10 days from a confirmed "simple and straightforward" remedy to health issues that are "more complex" than originally thought.
The best piece of reporting on the Jobs' health problems is still Peter Elkind's March 2008 cover story in Fortune "The Trouble with Steve Jobs." It was Elkind who first reported that Jobs delayed treatment for his pancreatic cancer for nine months while he pursued alternative medicine approaches. And it was Elkind who identified the type of surgery Jobs underwent in August 2004 — a particularly brutal and complex operation called the Whipple procedure — opening the door for other reporters to fill in the blanks. (See here.)
It's been downhill from there. One low point was the interview Jobs gave Joe Nocera of the New York Times last July in which he called the Times columnist (and former Fortune editor) a "slime bucket" before going off the record to reveal that his health problems went well beyond the "common bug" an Apple spokeswoman had offered as the reason for Jobs' sudden weight loss last June. (See here.)
Nocera kept Jobs' remarks out of his piece, but he did report what he and his colleague, John Markoff, had learned independently — that Jobs had told associates that he had a second operation earlier in the year to correct ongoing digestive problems, but that his cancer had not returned. (UPDATE: Nocera posted a new piece today on the Times blog, calling for Apple to come clean.)
This would not be the first time that the mainstream press reported — secondhand, from unnamed sources — that Jobs is cancer-free. Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal did it Thursday, the Times citing two sources "familiar with his medical condition," the Journal just one.
Note that no one at Apple has ever directly addressed the issue of recurrence. The closest anyone came was the e-mail Jobs sent to his staff in Aug. 2004 informing them that his operation was successful and that he was "cured." None of Jobs' subsequent statements have said anything about cancer, one way or the other.
Jobs' most recent e-mail set off the usual flood of journalistic second guessing (see Techmeme here). The most painful was CNBC correspondent Jim Goldman's TechCheck column Wednesday.
Goldman had gone out on a limb three weeks earlier, citing "sources inside the company" who assured him that Jobs' surprise decision to skip Macworld had nothing to do with his health. On Wednesday, he took it all back, calling the latest twist in Jobs' story "tantamount to fiduciary, ethical and financial whiplash."
Goldman went on to say that he has known since late last week that there was something wrong with Jobs — based on interviews with two "well known [but unnamed] tech industry executives … very close to Jobs."
"One said, based on his contact with Jobs personally, that he was in 'serious denial' about just how bad the circumstances had become. The other explained to me that he was 'deeply concerned' about Jobs, and the sudden lack of communication, the non-return of emails, ignoring chat requests, unreturned phone calls was a strong indication to him that Jobs was in 'dire' shape." (link)
This was quite a turnaround, and it led to perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the whole affair: a live segment on CNBC Wednesday afternoon in which Newsweek's Dan Lyons (a.k.a Fake Steve Jobs) confronted Goldman and accused him of "sucking up" to Apple to get access to the company and, as a result, getting "played and punked." The five-minute segment is the equivalent of a journalistic car wreck — you can't stop watching it — and has reportedly resulted in Lyons getting banned from CNBC for life (a report that a CNBC spokesman has since denied, although nobody has called Lyons to clear things up).
We've pasted the clip — in its entirety — below the fold.
If you found Mr. Jobs medical dispatches "contradictory", then you've probably never had to deal with a difficult medical condition.
For example, I spent the better part of 18 months having "minor surgical procedures" every 2 to 4 weeks intermixed with 3 major surgeries — each and every one of which was expected to permanently resolve the underlying problem.
Once you get not too far beyond the common cold, medicine turns into experimentation. The doctors essentially treat the most likely cause — and if that treatment doesn't work, they move on to a less likely cause.
I'm sure that Jobs is probably quite frustrated at his failure to thrive and is beyond livid with his doctors for their inability, thus far, to effectively treat whatever is ailing him.
But Jobs isn't stupid. If he'd known that he was going to be releasing this second notice and taking a medical leave of absence so soon after his previous notice, he'd have done so in a much more straightforward manner. I suspect that he reported reality as he wished it to be at the time.
One of the many reasons that medical issues don't make great fodder is because they quickly run into a situation where the treatment plan runs down a list of 10 to 20 probable causes and associated courses of treatment. How does one summarize that in a single paragraph? Without everyone jumping to the end of the list with the low probability causes that result in death?
At the end of the day, the fascination with Jobs' health has a lot more to do with the media selling ads and speculators attempting to manipulate the stock price than it has to do with Apple itself.
reinharden
"Getting the kind of information about Steve Jobs’ health that Apple’s (AAPL) investors and customers deserve is tricky"
What about the kind of Privacy Steve Jobs and his Family deserve? Any concern about that? Any at all?
You literally seem more interested in stock prices than you do if he dies. It's really quite shameless and disgusting.
I found the train wreck a joy to watch.
Sucking up to your reporting subjects in order to get access is a perennial problem in journalism. Every clear-cut example demonstrating how that easily leads to poor reporting is a service to mankind.
Dan Lyons is a known liar, he's been caught so many times its not even funny. He's an apple basher- the whole "fake Steve Jobs" thing was apple bashing pretending to be satire.
It seems obvious that Lyons is desperately trying to make a name for himself by generating controversy.
Everyone should be aware of the low long-term survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients. Regardless of the reporting on the subject it may just be that Mr. Jobs is at the start of the last battle with the disease. If that is the case my heart goes out to him and his friends and family. Regarding Apple? who cares. Apple will survive Mr. Jobs departure and its' future looks bright. Within an unfortunately short period of time Mr. Jobs will simply be a memory, nothing more. As we all will be someday.
Knowing what a hippie Steve Jobs is, doesn't anyone ever wonder if the expert opinion Jobs was relying on for insight on his heath was not a doctor at all?
Maybe he's been dealing with Naturopaths all this time and in this last week someone has FINALLY convinced him to go to a real doctor which has resulted in a real diagnosis.
Please!! You give yourselves way too much credit thinking this is a journalism train wreck and the clip is something we can't stop watching. Who cares? The story is not about CNBC's reporter getting duped (or not duped) by Apple. The story is whether Apple has leadership in place to manage this brand while Jobs is absent. The clip was a waste of everyone's time.
Why add to the poor man's discomfort and frustration, you bunch of heartless wnanna-be cowboys? Where's your simple human compassion? You would wring something out of him no matter what additional worry it causes him. Shame on you all.
I am very sad about this. Steve Jobs has given me products that have caused more fun and excitement than anyone else in the business. If this is the end of the line for him, it's far, far too soon.
As for the people worried about the stock price – it's clear he's sick and his attention will not be on Apple for a while. If that bothers you, sell your Apple stock. Actually, you should have sold your Apple stock months ago, as it was pretty clear that this would be happening at some point. Stop expecting day-to-day bulletins and medical progress reports.
I think the commenter who postulated that Steve is or was relying on non-standard treatments is probably right. That whole hormone imbalance thing did not sound very mainstream medical. But that's his right, as misguided as we might think it.
I'm just hoping he can beat this and come back to give us "one more thing".