According to Billet themselves, they heard nothing about compensation or payback until about 3 hours after the original GN video went live… Which Billet hadnt even replied to before Linus made his post saying they’ve already made the deal on compensation.
its not unprofessional to give the subject of a story that is doing active harm a heads up so they can use their position to pressure you into silence, or try to come up with some last minute hooplah to try to discredit the reporting rather than addressing the core issues in their own company.
Thats like telling a company that is actively dumping toxic waste into a river that you know they are doing it, and you would like comment before they report on scene next week. All you do is give them time to stop the dumping, clean up the obvious signs, and put out an undercutting statement to try and discredit/dismiss the legitimacy of the story.
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That has got to be the most corrupted take that could be possible taken from that.
You know what serves the public good? Reporting on it, So people can see what the company is doing, So they don’t get away with turning off the valve for a couple days… So they get held accountable for having the valve at all, and the exposure forcing them to spend their money on cleanup and decontamination, while the public outcry gets so bad that government steps in with regulation, and legislation, and oversight.
You know what doesnt serve the public good? Letting the corpo hide its shit and get away with everything, because you think theres some insignificant, nonexistent benefit to letting it do so.
By not letting Linus use his position to try and pressure Steve, by not giving Linus time to get a coverup in place, Linus got outed for lying about the Billet compensation, Further showing the lengths he’ll go to, to lie, double down, and shift blame to anything but himself.
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And then they resume the dumping next week, maybe at a different location and long term nothing changes.
Exactly.
Not every story requires input/comment from the subject.
Its not unprofessional or hitjobbing to not get one.
Especially when the subject has a public forum (WAN, Twitter, His own Website, Youtube, etc) where he has explicitly made his statements and stances known.
Then you go after them, again. And again. And again.