This week, the United States and the world in general lost one of its finest pitchmen and visionaries in the tech world. Steve Jobs, 56, co-founder of Apple, died this past Wednesday after suffering numerous health complications for the past couple of years. I learned of the news in my public relations class, which we fondly call a knitting club, because every Wednesday night, nine ladies, the professor included, meet for a seminar in PR at the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism. There wasn’t a better place for PR students to hear that sad news but in that class. Our professor, Samra Bufkins was quick to bring up an ethical issue which I was completely unaware of before Job’s demise- was Steve Jobs to report his illness to his investors?
Apparently, companies are required by the law to report all the facts necessary for an investor to know before making an informed decision to buy or sell the company’s stock. Most of us know by now that Steve Job’s health battle started in 2003 when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Though he underwent surgery which was expected to treat this rare form of curable pancreatic cancer, he later suffered from various health issues and even underwent a liver transplant. He took medical leaves from his position as Apple CEO and finally only resigned in 2011.
What classifies as information needed by investors when making the decision to buy or sell stock? That remains unclear and so from the legal point of view; maybe it was okay for the Apple CEO to keep his health issues private. He was after all, just an individual like you and I, and hardly anybody expects us to report our health conditions to stakeholders, ever. Actually, scratch that, because as an international student, I had to report my health status before stepping foot on American soil. Why do I bring up my experience, it is just to show that an individual’s right to privacy is not absolute. Ethically, Apple owed it to their stakeholders to inform them of his health problems.
Many people linked Apple to Steve Jobs, and I’m sure they’ll still keep doing that for a very long time. That is why it was important that the investors know who was in command of the company while he was CEO. I’m sure that people always expected to see the genius in a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck wow the crowd with some latest invention Apple was sending out at Apple conferences. At least, I did. How do I know that- in 2009, Apple stocks dropped 7 percent after Steve Jobs announced that he was taking a six-month medical leave.
My point from this whole experience is not to judge the company and tell them that what they did was right or wrong; or to tell lawmakers to better define the law requiring company honesty about their leaders’ health conditions. My main concern is how this fits into the PR world. I am no expert in public relations, but I believe that Apple’s PR department could have handled the whole debate better. They are famous for reporting that Jobs was suffering from a “common bug” when he appeared at Apple’s annual developers conference in 2008 looking frail and thin. Knowing the connection between Jobs and the company, maybe it might have been better if they had tried to use his sickly image to the company’s benefit instead of letting speculations and imaginations run wild.
Sometimes it is a blessing to have a person like Steve Jobs head a company, because he generated so much positive content for his organization. On the other hand, the PR department just witnesses a nightmare if such an iconic figure heading that organization like Jobs faces challenges such as Job's health issues. Apple can’t change what happened months and years ago, but PR professionals in other firms can certainly learn from the Apple example and spare themselves some criticism, spare the public the speculation, and their investors some extra worrying and confusion by not doing what Apple did.
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