Jimmy writes:
On the day that the story was coming out, we got a phone call from The Register darkly hinting about the story they were going to publish. After a quick consulation about what the heck they might be talking about, we decided that Mike should talk to them to find out what was going on.
In that interview, Mike spoke plainly of the simple truth... as of the time of that phone call, we had nothing to go on but the word of The Register itself, which hardly constitutes proof of anything. And the allegations were... shocking to say the least.
One of the reasons we decided -- against general practice -- to talk to the Register at all was to discover what it was they were trying to charge us with. What became apparent in my conversation with Cade Metz, which was a quite guarded one, was that they were fishing in the hope of finding a Foundation scandal somehow based on Carolyn's (purported) personal troubles. It was also clear that they had no actual evidence of any such connection.
This was useful information to have in advance of the story, and, given some more time to reflect on it, I still think we made mostly correct judgment calls with regard to how to handle it. I know some of you disagree. All I ask is that you take into account that handling controversial public issues is not something that is new to us collectively, and certainly not to me individually. So, even if we don't always do things the way you'd wish, it's not because we are new to public controversy. (Me, I'm rounding out my second decade of press relations on cyberlaw-related issues, following several years of working as a reporter and as an editor.)
This doesn't mean we don't make mistakes -- being human beings, we necessarily make mistakes. But I think we'e made relatively few of them in handling this story.
We had to take into account several variables -- legal, public- relations, community-relations -- and do so in a very short time- frame. I'm proud of how well our team stepped up and responded to a sudden challenge involving all these variables, and I haven't heard anything here that makes me less proud. I believe, based on my direct experience, that our team did well overall.
--Mike