On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Mark Radabaugh wrote:

That 'guy' is Verisign's Senior VP - he is spouting the company line. It's pretty irresponsible of NZNet to not identify who the person is. I would have hoped (but been highly surprised if he did) that McLauglin would have identified himself as an principle of Verisign. Just more of the PR machine on a roll.

But, if you look at news.google.com, at least now (11:42AMEDT), it had an article that paints sitefinder as bad, and the "115 related" include many more. I wonder how zdnet would feel about news,com.com going to verisign, especially since , isn't valid in DNS. Jason -- Jason Slagle - CCNP - CCDP /"\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign . X - NO HTML/RTF in e-mail . / \ - NO Word docs in e-mail .

At 9:29 AM -0700 10/8/03, Owen DeLong wrote:

On the CNET article that ZDNET seems to have copied lock stock and barrel, he did actually identify himself as a Verisign VP in the by line. As such, I think this is ZD's fault, not McLaughlin's. I don't have any love lost for Verisign, but, I think we need to be very careful to stick to criticisms that can stick to them. Otherwise, they will divert attention to our false claims and use them to prove that we are the net.kooks they are trying to make us out to be.

Owen

In the news/media business, focused complaints to an editor (or ombudsman when one exists) about unfair/inaccurate attribution tend to get noticed. In such a communication, identify only enough about the story that it's clear an attribution was omitted or only one side is being presented.

-- On Wednesday, October 8, 2003 11:07 -0400 -- Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net> supposedly wrote:

Amazing what different context the commentary would be placed in if ZDNET changed

By Mark McLaughlin CNET News.com October 7, 2003, 7:10 AM PT

to

By Mark McLaughlin Senior VP, VeriSign October 7, 2003, 7:10 AM PT

.... Because that's who he is. I realize its marked "commentary" but it should be more clear that the commentary is coming from the company in question.

True, and I completely agree. However, the bottom of the article says: biography Mark McLaughlin is senior vice president and deputy general manager of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services Division, which is responsible for running the Internet's .com and .net system. Let's hope we can append "not for long" if they keep this stuff up. :) -- TTFN, patrick

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

True, and I completely agree. However, the bottom of the article says:

biography Mark McLaughlin is senior vice president and deputy general manager of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services Division, which is responsible for running the Internet's .com and .net system.

Let's hope we can append "not for long" if they keep this stuff up. :)

The great thing about the web is a newspaper can bury its mistakes without having to admit it in the "Corrections" page. ZD.NET has modified the article the originally posted. ZD.NET added the biography and changed the byline in the last hour or so. The original article did not identify Mark McLaughlin nor include his biography.