Misinformation in the Media

As a kid, I used to sit in front of the TV and watch the news, or even pick up a news paper and read an article or two. I was taught at school that this information should be used to keep up to date with current affairs and the likes.

Unfortunately, like most people, there is a point in your life when you start to realise that the information provided in these mediums is far from accurate. It's not that they go out of their way to lie, it's more that the people reporting may accidentally forget to include something in their articles.

Yet another example of this appeared today in The Age. Basically, the article is about a "Security Specialist" who found a "security hole" in windows, and Microsoft did nothing to fix it. The truth of the matter is that it's a flaw in the Firewire specification which can be used to exploit any OS that has support for Firewire. In fact, the flaw is actually a "Feature" that allows connected firewire devices to access (read/write) directly to system memory. This can be used to do anything on a running computer you can possibly think of. The only limit is the attackers imagination.

I'm not sure that this omission was completely deliberate, it's probably more just a case of the author not actually knowing any better, which really begs the question about why they are in that job in the first place. In this case, they are probably there because they follow the current trends in the technology media. Bag out Microsoft, and Rave about Apple.

My real question is, how long is it going to take before someone finally gets fed up with this sort of Misinformation and actually does something about it. At the end of the day, companies need to rely on their image in the community, and when the media continually effects the image of a single company, there is only so much those companies will take..