On Friday morning, Goldman announced on CNBC's air that Microsoft was reducing its revenue guidance by $200,000,000. Because sophisticated investors know that means that Microsoft was making less money, they dumped the stock—volume spiked instantly from 1.3 million shares traded to 6.9 million, and the price dropped by about 1%. In the words of the network's own Mark Haines, "the Microsoft news just bombed the NASDAQ." The rapid drop on the left-hand side of this chart of Microsoft's performance Friday just before 11 a.m. coincides with Goldman's announcement.

Unfortunately, he got it precisely backward: Microsoft was cutting its operating expenses by $200,000,000. Goldman never corrected or apologized for the error, though he did offer a "clarification" shortly after and reported the guidance accurately in order to "make sure we all understand." Business Insider asked CNBC if that was it, or if an apology was in order:

Given the damage the report caused, we were surprised by this. We asked CNBC whether it planned to issue an apology. The answer was no. The network rep said, simply, "We corrected [the mistake] on air."

Frankly, we share CNBC's contempt for its audience. If you're stupid enough to spend money based on what CNBC says, you deserve to lose it. On the other hand, there's a killing to be made in CNBC fuck-up arbitrage.

There is no ambiguity about the facts now: In response to an FCC inquiry, Apple has released a statement absolving its carrier partner, stating, "Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application." AT&T confirmed, "AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store."

For users, the death of Google Voice on the iPhone — via the removal of some iPhone apps and indefinitely delay of another — meant more expensive text messages and international calls, and more snafus in trying to get friends to use the Google Voice phone number. It kept them locked in close to Jobs and his software, a relationship the Apple CEO guards jealously, some say anticompetitively. Jobs, for example, tried to lock Palm out of Apple's iTunes music jukebox; apparently tried to lock employees out of lucrative offers from competitors like Palm and Google; and tried (successfully) to lock competing browsers and podcasting software off the iPhone.

And yet blame was consistently placed on AT&T over the past few weeks. A Wall Street Journal op-ed, written by a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager, explained excatly "Why AT&T Killed Google Voice" (because "AT&T is dragging down the rest of us... and stifling innovation"). TechCrunch, the Valley blog that broke the Google Voice news, immediately declared that "it's not hard to guess who's behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T."

Prominent Mac-news writer John Gruber was the most certain on his Daring Fireball website. "Trust me," he wrote, "it was AT&T's decision." Gruber cited "an informed source:"

A reliable little birdie has informed me that it was indeed AT&T that objected to Google Voice apps for the iPhone. It's that simple.

Of course, it wasn't. Gruber did not respond to our emails, but so certain did the well-connected indy blogger sound that we can't help but wonder if he wasn't snowed by Apple itself. The company would not necessarily have anticipated that a swift, aggressive and public FCC investigation into the Google Voice incident would have proven AT&T blameless. And it's not like the company's flacks haven't been down this road before; Jim Goldman's sometime source and former CNBC coworker is an Apple flack, and Goldman's Apple sources had him reporting for weeks last fall that Jobs' health was "fine," before Goldman was suddenly forced to acknowledge it was very much not fine. (Gruber pointedly trumpeted CNBC's party-line reporting at the time while pissing on ultimately-vindicated posts from our colleagues at Gizmodo; in the interest of disclosure, we should note that this trend continues to this day, and that we find Gruber as reliably entertaining when he's wrong as when he's right, albeit for entirely different reasons.)

No matter how Apple's defenders were rallied this time around — we suspect, as a rule, that it had more to do with anti-AT&T bias than some pro-Apple whisper campaign — one can only hope this incident will further erode the myth that Apple is fundamentally any less inclined toward spiteful self-defeating authoritarianism than any other corporation of its size, be it AT&T, Google or, only slightly larger these days, Microsoft. Apple is uniquely molded to the whims of a single man, it is true, and already apologists have begun to excuse the Google Voice decision as fallout from Jobs' well-intentioned obsession with control. But Jobs, like his competitors, must be judged on actions, rather than intentions. And this one is pretty disgraceful.

UPDATE, Aug. 26: Gruber responded to our email:

I saw your post, and I think it's great. Totally fair.

My source (a) was wrong, not lying; and (b) from the enlisted ranks at Apple, not an officer. I am strong believer that when anonymous sources go wrong, readers deserve to know as much as possible about why, so, based on a few emails today exchanged with this same source, I plan to write about it briefly on DF. [Summary: The Apple source had his own Apple source, who he misunderstood.]

* * *

As for Goldman, I do not believe that he was spun back in December. Here's the nut paragraph Goldman wrote in December:

"I can tell you that sources inside the company tell me that Jobs's decision was more about politics than his pancreas. Sources tell me that if Jobs for some reason was unable to perform any of his responsibilities as CEO because of health reasons, which would include the Macworld keynote, I should "rest assured that the board would let me know.""

Clearly, we now know, wrong. But wrong about what? It was wrong that there was nothing seriously wrong with Jobs medically. But I am not convinced at all that anyone at Apple or on the Apple board was aware of how dire his condition was at that time, other than judging by his gaunt appearance — which at that point had been obvious for 8 or 9 months.

My hunch is that it is far more likely that Goldman's sources were unaware of Jobs's medical condition in December than that they lied to him about it. Think of it this way: Apple didn't benefit at all from December's "Jobs is fine" coverage, other than in the very short run. Come January, when he was forced to take his medical leave, these reports from just a few weeks prior made Apple's PR situation far *worse* than if they had said nothing at all to Goldman.

I suspect Jobs himself was not aware of the life-threatening magnitude or specific cause — his liver — until January.

What did Goldman have to say? Forget the underwhleming new version of OS X, AT&T's crippling of the best new iPhone OS features or the hubub about iPhone upgrade prices: The conference was a "home run." Video:

In another case of tech pundit disassembly, a different tipster was thrilled to find this picture of Walt Mossberg's bald spot on Gizmodo's liveblog:

The cable network's Silicon Valley bureau chief has been something of a parrot for Apple's public relations flacks, but Bartz found him too antagonistic, at least after Goldman asked a lengthy, tortured question that implied Yahoo has contended itself with its rival's leftovers. See the top clip at left.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Missing were the flashes of humor that had the audience at the D tech conference eating out of Bartz's hand after she cursed Swisher. (All Things Digital has finally posted video of the f-bomb; it's included in the lower clip.)

Goldman didn't seem to take the anger personally; he later laughed that "to call [Bartz] the straight-talking CEO of Yahoo would be... an understatement." Hopefully, if only for their sake, Bartz's underlings are able to take her bluntness in the same good humor.

As our colleagues at Gizmodo have reported (see update), when Goldman told On the Money's Carmen Wong Ulrich that Windows PCs are more expensive than they appear, each of his talking points was taken from this BusinessWeek article by Arik Hesseldahl. (The arguments, a list of costly extras supposedly required to make Windows machines as good as Macs, are neatly summarized in the CNBC graphic below. A clip of the appearance is above.)

The duplication of six data points between the BusinessWeek story and Goldman's CNBC segment would be enough, on its own, to give away Goldman's cribbing. But the real tell that Goldman didn't do his own work was his sloppy copying of BusinessWeek's comparison: Hesseldahl wrote that a PC buyer would need Adobe's low-end Photoshop Elements to match the Mac's built-in iPhoto. In the CNBC graphic, Goldman rendered this as "Photoshop" — a much more expensive program that doesn't come with a PC or a Mac. (Hesseldahl has now accused Goldman of "borrowing" his column, and pointed out other errors.)

Perhaps Goldman should go back to taking his lines direct from the mouths of Apple flacks. At least then there wouldn't be a paper trail of his copying, as there was this time around. Or the probability of an uncomfortable discussion with his boss about the exact boundaries of plagiarism.

This year's meeting is especially notable for the absence of Steve Jobs, who is on a six-month medical leave after his health took a visible turn for the worse starting last summer. Goldman, who made himself notorious for repeating Apple's PR lines as company flacks lied about the health of CEO Steve Jobs, first complained that Apple wasn't streaming the shareholder meeting over the Internet, which would save him the trouble of leaving his desk. Then he tut-tutted over Apple's decision to ban cell phones, laptops, and other wireless devices from the event.

It never occurred to him to just disobey Apple. That's what two members of Investor Village's Apple message board did. To their chagrin: The meeting was dominated by nutty environmentalists, universal healthcare advocates, and union-hating ranters. Apple board member Arthur Levinson shot down a question about whether the company had violated disclosure rules in not being forthcoming about Jobs's health. In short, the meeting was about as informative as a typical Apple report by Jim Goldman.

Earlier, we noted Goldman's habit of dressing up a top Apple flack's spin as information coming from a "source inside Apple." He's now extended that practice to Intel, the large chipmaker.

Bloomberg recently got a scoop about Intel CEO Paul Otellini predicting a first-quarter loss in a conversation with employees circulated internally. It's the kind of story CNBC viewers are hungry for.

But instead of getting the story first, Goldman tried to knock it down. Why? An Intel "source" told him that Otellini's comments didn't come in a "memo," but instead appeared in a "transcript." It's the kind of specious semantics only a flack would engage in, and no competent reporter would buy.

Indeed, later in the piece, Goldman quotes Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. That makes it look like the extent of Goldman's reporting was this: He spoke to Mulloy and agreed to attribute some of his comments to an unnamed "source" and print other on-the-record comments verbatim, magically transforming a one-source story straight from a company flack into something that looks like it has multiple sources.

What's really bizarre: We've heard that Goldman claims to be tight with Intel chairman Craig Barrett, who is no doubt one of the "tech-industry CEO" sources he cites on air. Former CNBC employees told us Goldman once flew to Brazil with Barrett on an Intel corporate jet and bragged about going on a hunting trip with the tech mogul. So why didn't Goldman get the scoop on Intel's first quarter, if he's so tight with Barrett? There would be far fewer questions about Goldman's reporting if he simply got stories first, and got stories right.

Though Goldman never discloses it on air, one of his Apple sources is Apple spokesman Steve Dowling, who previously worked with Goldman at CNBC'S Silicon Valley bureau. Does he have other sources within Apple?

He claims to, as the New York Times notes. He went on air last month, in the clip above, to declare Jobs "fine." And in a recent blog post, Goldman dug himself deeper as he stuck to his story:

All along, sources (and yes, there are several) inside Apple have reassured me that Jobs was firmly in charge, executing his responsibilities, and performing his role as C.E.O. One source, who I have known for years, told me recently that Jobs was 'fine,' and that everything was under control. All of it was fine. And I stand by every word of that reporting. Even today.

"Several" sources: Does that mean Goldman spoke to Dowling, his former colleague, and Katie Cotton, Jobs's personal PR guru at Apple, who has a track record of lying about her boss?

Take this earlier blog post from Goldman, when worries first emerged that Jobs, who had undergone surgery to treat pancreatic cancer in 2004, was skipping the annual Macworld Expo event where he usually delivers a keynote address, because his health was failing:

I can tell you that sources inside the company tell me that Jobs' decision was more about politics than his pancreas. Sources tell me that if Jobs for some reason was unable to perform any of his responsibilities as CEO because of health reasons, which would include the Macworld keynote, I should 'rest assured that the board would let me know.'

Sounds like Goldman has a direct line to the Apple board, right? Wrong. That's the same statement Dowling gave every other media outlet:

If Steve or the board decides that Steve is no longer capable of doing his job as CEO of Apple, I am sure they will let you know.

The only conclusion to reach here: Either Goldman is puffing up flacks as sources, or his sources don't exist.

That's what one former colleague of Goldman's thinks:

Here’s the key to revealing Goldman — he doesn’t have any sources. And his bosses back in New Jersey don’t know that. His only Apple "source" is a flack, Steve Dowling, who once worked at CNBC as the Silicon Valley (off-air) bureau chief.

The question you should raise — does CNBC's managing editor know who Goldman’s sources are? He inflates his bogus persona as a Silicon Valley insider by inventing sources. At any legitimate news organization, if you can use an unnamed "source" your boss must know who it is, by name.

Does CNBC follow this practice? (The answer, as I know well, is: no).

I’ve watched Goldman sit at his desk without picking up the phone for hours, then go on the air and say “I just got off the phone with a source inside Google who tells me...”

He flat out makes it up. He IS Jayson Blair. And he's the only person at CNBC who even tries to get away with it.

Fast Company's Adam Penenberg tried Googling "CNBC ethics" and came up short. We called Kevin Goldman, a spokesman for CNBC, to ask what the network's policies on anonymous sources were — how they were to be used, and whether reporters were obligated to reveal their identities to their editors and producers. (Such is the practice at most magazines and newspapers.)

Goldman (no relation to Jim) said, "CNBC has policies and guidelines that are followed by everyone. And we don't disclose those policies to the public." And he would not comment on the identity of CNBC's sources at Apple.

Blogs are not known for impeccable sourcing. (We call them "tipsters" for a reason.) But at least we're upfront about it — indeed, we're the first to question our sources, often in the same blog post that we cite them. That kind of probing uncertainty makes for a better path to the truth. But it doesn't make good television, and it doesn't fluff up the easily deflated ego of a self-declared "insider."

Luckily, we know some impolite ones.

Here's Goldman, Wednesday night, getting chopped off at the knees by Newsweek columnist (and former Steve Jobs impersonator) Dan Lyons.

Lyons: "You ever have a girlfriend who cheated on you, and at first it's like, 'I work late'?"

Goldman: "I reported exactly what I was told."

Lyons: "There are two kinds of reporters who cover Apple: The kind who realize they're getting snowed ... and the other kind who suck up to get access and end up getting played and punked, like your bureau chief."

Goldman: "I'm a big boy. I can handle it."

Had CNBC's viewers seen a full-body shot of Goldman like the one above, they would have cracked up just like Lyons did. And he isn't alone. Goldman has a terrible reputation among the Valley's elite which leads some to fixate on his height. "I hate that shrimp," one local tastemaker recently seethed at us.

Such is the dislike for Goldman that a tipster gleefully sent us the snap of Goldman getting a boost during a stand-up shoot at Macworld Expo earlier this month. (He stood on a piece of equipment to make his Lilliputian dimensions look more normal on-air.) It's a subterfuge that might have gone unremarked, if so many people weren't already scoffing at Goldman's credibility.

It is facile pop psychology, sure, but it's hard not to look at Goldman's combativeness — most recently on display in his aggressively incorrect denials of Apple CEO Steve Jobs's ill health — and not see a Napoleon complex, which he exercises at the expense of his reporting. (And his career: CNBC already has a short, angry man in Jim Cramer.)

Ridiculing a man behind his back for his height? So low. Valleywag would never stoop to that level. We'd say it to his face. Even if it hurts our neck a little.

Update: A big man, indeed: CNBC has banned Lyons from the network for life, according to Silicon Alley Insider. Or not, according to Silicon Alley Insider!

His source: A tech CEO with "no axe to grind" who is "in Jobs's inner circle" and worries that Jobs is in a "state of denial" about his declining health. Anyone familiar with Jobs knows that sure sounds like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison; Jobs is not close to many of his peers in the industry. Bill Campbell, the former CEO of Intuit, is the other likely candidate.

If he indeed spoke to the likes of Ellison or Campbell, Goldman learned what Valleywag readers knew a month ago: That a close friend, Ellison, is distraught over Jobs's health and believes that he is dying. (And, as Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson points out, if Goldman really knew this a week ago, why didn't he report it then?)

Instead of doing that reporting when he should have — last month — Goldman was content to recite Apple's press statements on air and reassure viewers that Jobs was healthy. (Cozily, Apple's top corporate flack, Steve Dowling, was previously CNBC's Silicon Valley bureau chief.)

Goldman is merely the worst of the mainstream pack of reporters who have chased their tails on the story of Jobs's secretly declining health, as blogs like Valleywag and Gizmodo have pushed the questions they are too polite (or lazy) to ask. Aside from some keen reporting by New York Times writers John Markoff and Joe Nocera last year, no one has gotten close to the truth: Jobs's gaunt appearance at an event last summer was merely the most obvious marker of the deeper health problems Apple CEO has suffered from since he was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004.

Jobs has now, in a belatedly noble move, stepped down from his job, having accepted that he can no longer do it. Some reporters might consider copying him.

CNBC's change of tune is a classic cautionary tale. Reporters trade favorable coverage for access to products and executives all the time. But Jim Goldman, the network's tech reporter, has turned access journalism into a cringe-inducing parody of itself.

When the iPhone launched in the summer of 2007, CNBC didn't get a review unit. NBC's Today show did, but a staged call between hosts Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer famously failed. Later that day, a CNBC reporter went on air for an On The Money segment and launched into a tirade about Apple's botched PR, its unshowered fanboys, and its trouble with the SEC over stock options. (That reporter was not Goldman, as we incorrectly reported in an earlier version of this post; Goldman tells us he was "livid" with the segment.) The rant was acidic, funny, over the top — and, for a cable-news network, shockingly accurate.

After that, CNBC insiders say, Apple's PR operatives called up executives at the network and threatened to cut off access for good. The show's producer was called onto the carpet, and soon afterwards left the network; to this day, many employees still believe he was fired under pressure from Apple. (He actually wasn't, but he told an acquaintance that the Apple incident left a bad taste in his mouth and hurried his exit.)

Goldman, on the other hand, has been carefully toeing the Apple line, and was rewarded last summer with a face-to-face interview with Jobs. The Apple CEO's scarily gaunt appearance was on everyone's mind, including Goldman's. But the subject never came up. Goldman later wrote that he was privately horrified by Jobs's "sickly" state but thought better of probing into it.

Which brings us to the latest Jobs health scare, which turned out to be well-based in fact. Goldman sputtered on air as he had to explain the denials he was spoonfed by Apple PR — and acted outraged when a coworker made a joke about Jobs's hormonal imbalance — the root of his weight loss — being like PMS.

And who wielded the spoon? Steve Dowling, Apple's top corporate flack under Katie Cotton, was Goldman's predecessor as CNBC's chief Silicon Valley correspondent. We hear he left the network on bad terms. If so, that surely made the revenge of turning his replacement into Apple's pet all the sweeter. Do you think that if Goldman's really nice, Dowling will hire him, too?

In an intro to a segment, Power Lunch anchor Dennis Kneale, the BlackBerry-deprived crybaby, asks if Jobs had cancelled his keynote speech at tomorrow's Macworld Expo because of "PMS," alluding to the hormonal imbalance Jobs confessed to this morning in a letter posted on Apple's website. This sparked sputtering outrage from Silicon Valley correspondent Jim Goldman, who has proven to be a consistent Apple apologist. (A sample of his awestruck prose: "The power of technology. The power of Apple and Steve Jobs.") Kneale apologized at the end of the segment. Come on, Dennis! We hoped you might prove to be the one journalist at CNBC to escape Jobs's reality distortion field.

In a letter posted to Apple's website, Jobs writes:

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

The letter is an obvious response to the furor unleashed by a post on the gadget blog Gizmodo, in which a source privy to Apple's product secrets claimed Jobs's health was "rapidly declining." The source was right about the "declining" part, wrong about the "rapidly," it turns out.

It has been an expensive secret to keep. Apple's market value has jumped by $2.3 billion this morning alone, as traders reveled in the relief of a lie undone.

In the fall of 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a fact he kept secret until July 2004, when he underwent surgery to remove the cancer and rewire his digestive system.

This summer, when Jobs's gauntness grew unmistakable, people wondered if Jobs's cancer had returned. But a simple look at a decade worth of photos of Jobs, who is famed for his annual keynote speech at January's Macworld Expo, showed that his weight loss was progressive, not the sign of some sudden illness.

Stupidly, that was the story Apple spokespeople stuck to — that he had a "common bug." The denial of a deeper health problem just fueled more speculation — and led Jobs, in a profane call to a New York Times writer, to explain, off the record, the same mysterious health problem he's now told the world about.

Jobs's terse explanation, though, raises more question than it answers. Now that he's given everyone a tidbit, they'll want more. Which hormones? What's the cure? Why did Jobs take so long to say he had a health problem? Why did Apple PR lie and say everything was fine? And why did gullibly servile reporters like CNBC's Jim Goldman buy it, counting a call to an Apple spokesman as "reporting"?

Which brings me back to the stock market's reaction: Investors are, perversely, happier knowing Jobs is unwell. Which means it's time for him to go. He has done incredible things for Apple in the past decade, rescuing a company that the industry viewed as certainly moribund.

But the lack of clarity about his future has become an albatross for the company. The stock market hates risk. So the possibility that Apple might lose Jobs's services through death and illness gets discounted; as far as investors are concerned, Jobs is already dead to them.

Which is the real reason why we're seeing Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller, Jobs's jokey demo sidekick, give Jobs's keynote speech tomorrow. Jobs may be better by the spring. But it's time for his company to act like he's gone.