How Corporations Game the Media

So Wired News does an article on increased transparency
at Microsoft, mainly covering their Channel 9 site. Someone at
Microsoft mistakenly sends Fred Vogelstein, the author of the story, a
confidential internal dossier about how the company is managing the
story internally. It covers who's talking to Vogelstein, what they're
telling him, and how likely it is that they will be able to make sure
that the story presents the message Microsoft wants delivered. It's
sort of the corporate version of the Scooter Libby trial and further
illustrates how journalists and their subjects attempt to game one
another. Wired editor provides some background on the memo, and you can find the memo itself here
(it's a PDF). The memo even reveals that Microsoft planned ahead of
time to get Wired to write the story in the first place. In the end,
Microsoft got the story they wanted published, so even in spite of the
memo being leaked before the story was finished, their plan was a total
success.

Fascinating stuff.