The recent Microsoft Mesh announcement at Web 2.0 provoked some calls of 'bias' by the BBC favouring MS. Some felt the coverage was disproportional with respect to the level of product being delivered beyond the usual promises and slide-ware. In a former life I worked for the Beeb so I have some interest in the veracity of this claim.
Simple research points to a broad market share figures (rounded on my part) which gives MS a 90% share, Apple a 7% share and all others (mostly Linux) a 3% share. Therefore it would be reasonable to expect news coverage in roughly the same proportion, using the following search terms 'Microsoft Windows', 'Apple Mac' and 'Linux' and out of curiousity 'IBM' the results were as follows:
| Articles | ||
| Microsoft Windows | 9500 | 61% |
| Apple Mac | 2700 | 17% |
| Linux | 1000 | 6% |
| IBM | 2500 | 16% |
The search was run on the BBC 'news' section only and I know the percentages are sort of spurious and that if I added in iPhone I would boost the Apple numbers, but by my reasoning the bias looks to be towards Apple not towards Microsoft.
By the way a search on IBM Lotus gave me 11 stories (and some of those are very interesting)
Comments (2)
Ok, so, it's a year after this article but I'm sorry, bias is not proven by levels of coverage but by what the articles actually say. You have no logical argument there. But I'm just leaving my piece, Stephen Fry and Private Eye will be doing all the major work.
Posted by BobTheInsane | March 27, 2009 1:22 PM
Posted on March 27, 2009 13:22
Its a fair point Bob, but I was not trying to qualitatively analyse the content (as if that would be possible!). My thoughts are still that Apple gets the best (relative treatment) but MS does not do bad (speaking now as one with a vested interest), the Linux coverage does seem a bit low but MS does have the widest portfolio other than IBM about whom these days nobody seems to care (even IBM)
Posted by Anonymous | March 27, 2009 1:44 PM
Posted on March 27, 2009 13:44