By Daniel Eran Dilger

Published: 01:20 AM EST (10:20 PM PST)

The New York Times appears to have lost its invitation to the Apple party in a vein similar to Gawker Media's Gizmodo blog, after printing a series of scathing reports that described the company as indifferent to terrible worker conditions in China.

A report by Erik Wemple of the Washington Post highlighted an exclusive interview Apple's chief executive Tim Cook granted the Wall Street Journal, noting that the piece wasn't just a juicy scoop for the Journal, but also "pain for the shunned," particularly the New York Times, which Wemple called "the most aggressive pursuer of Apple-related news on the planet."

Not only was the Times passed over for an interview with Cook, but it also appeared to be studiously ignored by Apple in the prerelease presentation and week long preview of OS X Mountain Lion that the company offered to everyone from Macworld to independent bloggers including John Gruber of DaringFireball and Jim Dalrymple of the Loop.

The Times was left to report on the Mountain Lion release initially citing other publications and Apple's press releases, and its full report on the release "hit the web late," which the report noted as something that "would qualify as an embarrassment for the New York Times."

In a letter to Apple employees, Cook indirectly described the allegations published by the Times in saying "some people are questioning Apple’s values today," and adding that "any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us."

In a series of reports involving Apple and workers' conditions among its overseas suppliers, the Times cited "former Apple executives" as making comments such as, "We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on. Why? Because the system works for us."

The Times also cited Apple's own Supplier Responsibility reports to allege, "under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records."

Uninvited

Apple previously snubbed Gizmodo by withholding invitations to its media events after the blog obtained a stolen iPhone 4 prototype and refused to return it before detailing the device, demanding better access to Apple's future products and, according to Apple, damaging the device while trying to take it apart.

The investigating district attorney in the case later said, "It was obvious they were angry with the company about not being invited to some press conference or some big Apple event. We expected to see a certain amount of professionalism-this is like 15-year-old children talking."

Gizmodo subsequently acted as the ringleader behind 2010's "Antennagate" accusations that the iPhone 4's antenna was improperly designed, then acted as a sounding board for the 2011 sequel dramatically headlined "iSpy Conspiracy: Your iPhone Is Secretly Tracking Everywhere You’ve Been, All The Time," an media event that required Apple to host a press briefing and answer questions posed by concerned Congressmen.