Should a company who made a legal threat to suppress negative publicity get good publicity on other occassions afterwards?
Obviously, the “ethical” issue is that any discussion of the company is going to be skewed and most readers won’t know it.
It’s a bit like somebody posting that XYZ is the best satellite phone company while not disclosing that they hold their shares.
It’s a practical issue in GA because there aren’t that many players in the business.
Peter wrote:
Should a company who made a legal threat to suppress negative publicity get good publicity on other occassions afterwards?
Sorry Peter, but I don’t understand what you’re driving at …
Impartiality is a big problem with media in general, especially when the business model is based on sales of advertisement. A customer can threaten to withdraw their advertising budget in exchange for not publishing negative articles, or even worse, publishing skewed articles. And it gets worse when the owners of the media have other business interests and can hire and fire editors and journalists. There might be all kinds of other ways companies can influence the press, including legal.
Making legal threats to suppress negative publicity can be perfectly legitimate if the media did not have their facts right, or the article for some reason has a spin to it. This is something that any media needs to be able to deal with, and it is the editor’s responsibility to decide to publish or not the article. In the name of impartiality, there is no reason not to give the company good press afterwards if it is deserved, although it might be difficult if you hold a grudge…
There is no grudge… it is a question on the principle. I think normal media do often report that some report or whatever had been squashed.
Peter wrote:
It’s a bit like somebody posting that XYZ is the best satellite phone company while not disclosing that they hold their shares.
Wouldn’t I normally buy shares of a company I honestly believe in? Would you accuse me of having a hidden agenda when talking chemistry because I hold 5 shares of BASF?
If a company believes it has legal grounds to pursue the press, it should do that. The press has many ways to fight back, not the least exposing the company. Also companies are made up of a lot of people, departments, interests etc., you can’t always treat them as a single entity with a single will and interest.
Wouldn’t I normally buy shares of a company I honestly believe in? Would you accuse me of having a hidden agenda when talking chemistry because I hold 5 shares of BASF?
Sure… at that level it’s a bad example because e.g. just about everybody in the UK (who doesn’t live in the gutter) is indirectly invested in Vodafone (20% of the FTSE100) and prob99 Imperial Tobacco, etc 
Without naming names or any info you’re uncomfortable releasing, can I ask if this relates to EuroGA, or something you saw elsewhere?
It’s really disappointing if people were threatening legal action against EuroGA.
To me, if they were threatening legal action, then I wouldn’t be too happy about supporting the disseminating of their good news.
The only exception would be if they were correct in trying to protect their interests and had no choice. Eg. Someone says that say the authority of X country has deemed a product Y unsafe and should not be used. This is turns out to be untrue, and product Y’s manufacturer asks for a correction or the story to be removed, and EuroGA refused. Then I think they’d be justified.
But I find it extremely hard to believe that that could happen here (nor in most other places).
What’s more likely is that someone stated an opinion, that manufacturer Y didn’t like and tried to use fear of legal action to get it removed instead of disputing the claims and putting their side forward. In that case, I wouldn’t be too interested in helping them out when they want good publicity.
Colm
An eye for an eye
Peter wrote:
Obviously, the “ethical” issue is that any discussion of the company is going to be skewed and most readers won’t know it.
Isn’t this just business as usual? In that case just make it known what they did in straight forward terms. The product may be good regardless of behavior of the company, but the end users are free to chose products for any reason what so ever, also ethical reasons.
can I ask if this relates to EuroGA
It does relate to EuroGA but not anything recent, and no posting was removed.
If a posting was removed for a reason such as this, I would say so and why.
Just normal in business
It is just like the current story about a well non airline seeking to prevent a documentary about fuel reserves (which I at first thought you had in mind). Commercially you will act to prevent bad publicity and embrace good. The bad publicity might be unjustified, but then so might the good. As MI5/6 like reminding us you have only heard one side of the story.
