There's been so much blog traffic about the recent incident where my company, Waggener Edstrom, was reported as having accidentally forwarded the "dossier" on journalist Fred Vogelstein of Wired magazine to him.  I think my colleague Frank Shaw did a good job of addressing the issue in his blog entry and there really isn't much new insight to add.  I had been snowed under the past two weeks and wasn't really able to comment on the whole incident, but for the record here's my response to Media Connect, an Asian web site for media and communication industry professionals (link here, subscription required):

As communications professionals it is our job to make sure that our clients have all the information they need to tell their story. I'm sure many journalists have had the experience of working with poorly prepared interviewees that got in the way of them writing a good story, and know how frustrating that can be!

A briefing document allows our clients to better understand the story they are trying to tell and what elements will be of most interest to the reporter. A reporter wouldn't share their interview preparation notes with the interviewee; similarly we normally do not share these briefing documents with the reporter. When that inadvertently happens...well, we're seeing the fallout now.

Waggener Edstrom and Microsoft work closely together in a business partnership and as Charles Fitzgerald of Microsoft shares here, the partnership continues to remain strong. By the way, Charles stated for the record that the memo was accidentally leaked by a Microsoft employee. My colleague Frank Shaw, in blogging about the incident, refrained from commenting on the reason for the "email boo boo". Considering the amount of fire he's under now, I find that incredibly gracious of him.

Posted by David Ko on 31 March, 2007