What if tech journalism is the bad guy?

A much-shared Wired article this weekend highlights how a changing public mood is — or isn’t — affecting a tech sector used to being painted as heroic.

The author, Erin Griffith, notes that the media used to be filled with unquestioningly fawning puff pieces about new tech companies, and having been “burned” by badly behaved tech firms, journalists now cover the industry in a much more skeptical way. But the article misses a just as important point — all that fawning press coverage acted as an enabler for Silicon Valley’s worst crimes.

The novelty of novelty

As the tech industry rapidly expanded, boosted in no small part by the growth of smartphones and the app economy, so did the number of media outlets devoted to covering it. These new titles often hired young, inexperienced writers and editors, keen to make an impact in a competitive field.

The PR departments at bigger tech firms used this scrum to their advantage. When journalists asked for comment on a story, they’d often be given information ‘on background,’ attributable only to a source within the company. This worked well for the tech companies, who got to distance themselves from any expectation of true accountability.

‘On background’ information also worked well for the journalists, who got to look…