A little fact checking goes a long way

On Friday, Arvest Bank became the first bank, according to Lana Flowers of the Morning News, to offer an iPhone application specifically for its own customers. That impressive bit of news comes as a shock to the Bank of America customers who have been using an app specific to their bank for the better part of a year.

To properly break this down, I will include first the entire quoted passage, and then we will break things down individually.

Arvest is the first bank to have its own specific iPhone application, said Jason Kincy, vice president of alternative delivery for Arvest Bank. He does marketing, public relations and web communications for the bank. Arvest has about 14,000 mobile banking customers and about half use iPhones, he said.

There are other mobile banking applications available, but the Arvest application will use the iPhone geographic positioning system. It will determine where a customer is, then pull information about the closest automatic teller machines and branch locations, Kincy said. The Arvest iPhone application also will show branch hours and give driving directions.

So to get right to it, we'll start at the beginning. Is Arvest, as quoted by Flowers, "the first bank to have its own specific iPhone application?"
According to Apples listings on the iPhone App Store, which is readily viewable through iTunes without an account, Bank of America posted Version 2.0 of its app on Jan. 12, 2009.
So Arvest missed one; it happens, right?
Wells Fargo Version 1.1.0 posted Aug. 30, 2009.
PNC Mobile Banking Version 1.4 posted on Nov. 17, 2009.
USAA, a company offering insurance and banking to those in the military, posted Version 2.0.3 of its banking software on Sept. 25, 2009.
Amarillo National Bank posted Version 1.0 on Sept. 1, 2009.
Keep in mind that, with the exceptioin of Amarillo National Bank, all of these applications have been upgraded, improved with newer versions, meaning the actual release date is earlier. Also remember that the dates are maintained by Apple, not the uploading entity.

Second, we can take their second claim, that Arvest's app is the first to "use the iPhone geographic positioning system" to determine the closest branch and ATM. It's a great feature. I've used it. There is no doubt about the convenience, but we have only to look at the 11-month-old Bank of America application to debunk the claim. The claim on the BoA app, which is tested by Apple before becoming available to the public, reads, "Use our ATM and banking center Locator to find the neares location with a simple touch of a button, no address input required." I remind you again that this app version was posted Jan. 12, 2009.

Finally, we'll address the unspoken claim, that this app is a mobile banking app. Nowhere in the story does anyone from Arvest or app designer Rockfish Interactive say mobile banking is available through this application. They also did not, apparently, go out of their way to make sure Ms. Flowers understood what could obviously have caused some confusion. This application does nothing except tell customers where to find a branch or an ATM. Arvest's mobile banking has been and remains available on iPhone through an application called Mobile Banking on AT&T. It is not a bad application, but it could use a few bells and whistles. Mobile alerts for account activity (as opposed to e-mail alerts) would keep it up with its competitors. But it's proved a suitable application for Arvest and the 25 or so other banks offering it to their customers.

It would be easy, following this story, to blame Arvest for dishonest self-promotion to a gullible reporter, and I'm going to do just that. Your flagrant disregard for honest communication casts shame onto the Walton name. (What? You didn't know one of Sam's sons started Arvest? Why do you think it's in all the Wal-Marts?) What did you stand to gain from your dishonesty? Arvest is already the biggest banking chain in the area, and Bank of America, the company that beat you to the punch, hasn't posed much of a threat. But we'll see what happens when your competitor calls the Morning News looking for justice.

I am not letting Lana off the hook so easily. Oh, Lana, poor Lana. Being a second-rate reporter at a second-rate newspaper (and only second rate because you can only consider nothing as a good alternative once) is no excuse for not doing basic simple fact checking. Do you know how many people have an iPhone around you? It takes one call to the City of Rogers, where Rufus Ramey is upgrading employees from Blackberrys to iPhones at a serious pace. Anyone who has received one, from the mayor down, could have quickly checked for you, as could many of your coworkers. Which reminds me, of all the editors I've seen sporting an iPhone, which read this story and thought to double check the facts? Shame on you. Shame on you all. Of course, that lack of diligence and disregard of the readers is what anyone reading this has come to expect. Bravo.
And, to the rest of you:
Happy reading.