Most recently, Apple utilized covert tactics to challenge a Reuters story about Apple’s accessibility practices. Reuters referred to Apple as a champion of the blind community, but called for the company to do even more work in the accessibility field. Unable to get Apple to comment for the story, the article quoted a 2013 Tim Cook speech to underscore Apple’s understanding of accessibility’s importance. Despite being unwilling to officially participate, Apple asked Reuters off the record to include more quotes from Cook’s speech, said a person familiar with the situation. Reuters declined, since the speech is publicly available material. Instead of commenting on-the-record before or after the article was published, Apple’s PR team disapprovingly pointed a loyal group of Apple-focused bloggers to the entire 2013 speech transcript, and these bloggers then used the supplied details to attack Reuters. As Fortune put it, “it didn’t take long for [Apple’s] friends in the media (with some gentle prodding from Apple PR) to strike back.” Despite being aware of the entire process, and having the opportunity to be positively, publicly involved, Apple publicly said nothing.
Saying little on-the-record is a classic Apple PR strategy.