A nice "scoop" from Australian IT journalist David Richards caused some furore in the blogging community with best commentary from New Kid on the Blog Phil Sim. Microsoft's Robert Scoble took offence at Richards' report, as did the vast majority of the Microsoft-aligned blogging community. What's interesting with this scoop is that Richards takes the attitude that if someone in the industry has said something, then it is fair game to write about it. While this sort of journalistic bravery is to be commended, and may in a certain percentage of the time actually uncover the truth, what about the personal cost to those being used as the source for the story? Sure – whoever made this claim to Richards shouldn't have said it, but people do silly things all the time. And if that person is not directly involved with Microsoft, who knows what sort of chain of Chinese Whispers existed before the news reached Richards? Still, good luck to the guy for putting his "balls on the block" as they say…
