The story I chose to comment on this week is about takeover of IT services provider Perot Systems by computer giant Dell. The story was covered by BBC News as well as CNN Money. Both articles cover the story of Dell’s takeover and benefits this will have for both parties, Dell and Perot Systems. Two companies are from Texas and are considered very successful. Dell specializes in personal computers whereas Perot Systems specializes in IT support for hospitals, government departments, and banks. Both stories seem to agree on the benefits this will bring to both companies. BBC News chose to add a statement by Mr. Dell to emphasize Dell’s attitude towards this acquisition “The acquisition makes such great sense because of the obvious ways our businesses complement each other”. On the other hand, CNN Money emphasizes the opinion of Gartner analyst John Enck who states that “we’ve seen this coming, but I’m surprised it took as long as it did”. Both headings are very similar if not the same; “Dell to acquire Perot for $3.9bn” by BBC News and “Dell to buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion”. Both articles use the $3.9bn in their title suggesting that this information is very important for the reader. The way in which these to stories are different is how they approach the story. BBC News provided the reader with very straight forward information about Dell’s takeover and positive aspects of this acquisition. There is very little numerical information apart from 23% fall in Dell’s profit from the last year’s 12.8bn. BBC News article focuses more on qualitative part of this takeover, stating opinions of Mr Dell and Mr Perot. Overall the story is very positive and there is room for the reader to make his/her own opinion about it. The language used is very easy to read and understand, formal and everything in the article is backed up quoting Mr Dell and Mr Perot. Looking at CNN Money we can see that they go much deeper in the story, giving lots of quotations and numerical data. Unlike BBC News, CNN Money critiques Dell for not doing this sooner. This article keeps on stating that this should have been done earlier and that such a move is crucial for diversification of Dell especially now when their sales are going downwards. There are a few lines where the article compares Dell to its rivals Hewlett-Packard(HP) and IBM; “The move marks a strategic shift for Dell, which has stuck with its personal computer and server sales even as its rivals like HP and IBM continue to diversity amid slumping hardware sales.” There is a certain dose of critique in this sentence. This continues later on in the story by saying “Dell was likely ‘gun shy’ about making any deals, despite the fact that its rivals have been diversifying, because of a late 1990s storage networking acquisition that ‘didn’t go anywhere’”. It can be said that this article is a bit bias because it is mostly based on the opinion of one man, analyst John Enck. One part of this CNN Money story can be interpreted as ironic, “The Perot acquisition will “absolutely” broaden Dell’s market share, Enck said, adding that the company will likely wait to digest this acquisition before it plans to make any more additions.”
The article by CNN Money was much more interesting to read in my opinion because of the language used and the stile in which it was written. It gave more information, but understanding how to interpret this information is crucial. If someone only read the story by CNN Money, they could easily get impression that Dell is having hard time diversifying and catching up its competitors IBM and HP. To sum up, these to articles are a very good example of how a same story can be presented in different way by different News sites.
Sources:
1) Story from BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/8267054.stm 2009/09/21
2) Story from CNN Money:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/21/technology/dell_acquires_perot_systems
2009/09/21
