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iPhone 5 Best Buy Report Hoax: Where’s the Outrage?

BGR’s Best Buy document that purports to announce the iPhone 5‘s launch is proven to be a hoax. When will the tech media — and the iPhone enthusiasts that frequent them — stop believing the lies?
The iPhone 5 community has been duped again.
A day after CNET UK‘s epic fail for mis-predicting September 7th as the announcement and/or launch date of the iPhone 5, a seemingly juicy report from Boy Genius Report from a few days back, which purported to show a Best Buy internal memo for store managers revealing the target release date for the iPhone 5, has turned out to be a complete hoax. Beatweek‘s Bill Palmer reports, “The Best Buy internal memo revealing the iPhone 5 release date to be in the first week of October, and signifying that Sprint would be carrying the device in addition to incumbents Verizon and AT&T, is a fake designed to identify potential leakers within the retailer, according to a source.”
Just as CNET UK has not addressed their failed September 7th announcement, we have yet to see anything from Boy Genius Report to update the story that they broke, which sent a streak of excitement through the iPhone 5 rumor mill. Is BGR’s “genius” all about breaking bogus iPhone 5 stories to drive massive amounts of traffic to their website, with no regard for getting the story right?
That seems to be the modus operandi of even the most-read tech media websites these days in the run-up to the iPhone 5‘s announcement and subsequent release. It’s a cynical, dishonest manipulation of peoples’ hopes and desperation over a later-than-usual iPhone release. For those of us who rely on technology like smartphones to keep us connected to our work and social spheres — who are passionate about how the iPhone makes our lives just a little bit better. To prey on this community, all for making a buck, is pretty reprehensible.

The iPhone 5 News Blog immediately identified the BGR iPhone 5 Best Buy story to be bogus, which we reported on in our September 5th article, “Best Buy iPhone 5 Document: Early Oct Launch ‘Expected,’ Not ‘Confirmed’,” concluding that “In light of these inconsistencies, I call for BGR to make every page of that purported document available to the media. It would also be helpful to unearth other examples of similar Best Buy documents to compare the voracity of this one. Again: while the possibility of an early October release is very plausible, it still doesn’t make this story — or document — either truthful or accurate in and of itself.” Where is the outrage over these constantly-exploding iPhone 5 release date rumors? Why aren’t blogs and websites who make these false claims held to account?
Clearly, the biggest story right now with the iPhone 5 isn’t what it will look like, or when it will be released — Apple has proven that they will keep us completely in the dark about these questions until a time and place of their choosing. What remains, then, is to expose and condemn the so-called journalists who will post and print anything  – including doctored photos and documents — as a means of driving web traffic and making money.
This, to me, is the biggest story circulating around the iPhone 5 rumor mill — a story that no one else seems to want to report on — and the best thing we can do with our pent-up frustration over the iPhone 5′s delay is to hold irresponsible media outlets responsible for manipulating the iPhone community. Or, at the very least, call for them to update their false claims with some sort of mea culpa.