A very telling and disapointing though not suprising story about various tactics P.R. flacs and lawyers use to hide or kill detrimental stories in the media. From hiding press releases amongst mounds of other news to giving it to one paper knowing the competitor won’t publish it once it’s been covered already by their nemesis.
That the targets of negative reporting would use all the tactics they can to protect themselves I can understand, I wish they wouldn’t resort to scare tactics but I can see why they do it. What I really don’t like about it is how it is so easy to use bigmedia because they compete like they were selling sugared water, it’s not about getting the news out, it’s about getting it before the other guy and then skipping on it because it’s old news quick. It hurts the quality of the information because it’s thrown together to get there first and it hurts the quality of the news that surrounds us because it’s in no way based on it’s value as information, just it’s value as a product to be sold.
Take pretty much any subject you know well from personal experience or from learning about it for years then watch a report on any news show or even read coverage in a major newspaper, it’s so watered down and/or angled for punch as to be barely recognizable much less of any worth, no wonder people are badly informed.