This is why people don’t trust journalists. Ryan Tate’s headline in Valleywag does not match the so-called article (two paragraphs does not an accurate accusation make):
Apple and Google are among a handful of tech companies who fought to hide the race and gender of their workforce from newspaper reporters. And no wonder: Their diversity probably went from bad to worse.
Probably? Not one fact to back up the headline. Not one.
The headline is based upon a San Jose Mercury News report that the largest Silicon Valley companies have just 7-percent black and Hispanic employees (about half the national percentages), and that Apple, among other companies, refused to divulge race and gender statistics, calling the information ‘trade secrets.’
I’m convinced that Apple’s employee race and gender stats are somewhat below the national average, particularly for black and Hispanics. Roughly half of all Apple employees are retail workers, which would skew those statistics. I wonder what percentage of Apple’s customer base is black or Hispanic.
How does a reader juxtaposition Tate’s misleading headline with his summary?
It’s entirely possible that Apple CEO Steve Jobs, for example, is hiding a very diverse workforce behind this management team.