When you think about it, there's something terribly satisfying about all this rumor and speculation that's been kicked up by the claim that Apple's ad agency, Chiat-Day, has been engaging in some questionable practices to-- you guessed it-- prevent rumor and speculation. A few days ago, ZDNet ran an article claiming that Chiat-Day has been demanding signed affidavits from Mac publications, swearing that the magazines wouldn't engage in "publishing rumors or speculation about Apple or Mac." ZDNet claimed that publications who refused to comply would lose Apple's ad business.

Personally, we at AtAT didn't see anything particularly wrong with that alleged strategy, other than the fact that collecting these written pledges to stay rumor-free seemed a tad overly-eccentric. Apple should spend its advertising dollars wherever it feels it will most benefit the company, and we can only assume that people who see this as a censorship or First Amendment issue are privy to some law regulating Apple's ad budget distribution that no one told us about. In any case, Chiat-Day (who kept mum for the last article) has finally given its side of the story to ZDNet: according to the ad agency, this is all just business as usual.

Yes, Chiat-Day claims that Apple had nothing to do with the agency's recent attempt to secure written no-rumors promises from the likes of Macworld and MacAddict. These overtures were "strictly routine" for Chiat-Day-- "part of our normal process with publications," according to Jeremy Miller, the agency's public relations director. "Apple didn't have any knowledge of the situation." Apparently this is something that Chiat-Day does for all of its clients.

Wow. Maybe it's our overly-suspicious nature kicking into hyperdrive, here, but we find that a little hard to swallow. Given Apple's holy crusade against Mac rumors over the past couple of years, it's a little hard to believe that Chiat-Day's recent "routine" actions are simply a coincidence. Perhaps we'd be a little more likely to believe the agency if we found out that, say, NewsWeek had to promise not to speculate about future Levi's jeans, or Fox couldn't air any Taco Bell ads until they promised not to broadcast any rumors about that chihuahua.