Charlie Prestwood, a former Enron employee, gushed when TheDeal.com’s Yvette Kantrow called him. “You’re my 97th interview!” he exclaimed. Prestwood wants to be interviewed 100 times by different media outlets so that he can tell the story of how his $1.3 million retirement nest egg went up in flames with Enron went down.
The beginning of the Enron trial is bringing out other former Enron workers who are more than happy to be interviewed in the media.
Executive Editor Kantrow writes: “For the media, that means making what is essentially the saga of corporate fraud newly meaningful to a public that at this late point in the scandal cycle has had its fill of accounting discrepancies, off-balance-sheet shenanigans and other business arcana. With no truly outlandish tales of executive greed to fall back on — no chichi shower curtains or urinating statues here — the media requires something else to serve as a symbol of the sure-to-be-dry legal proceedings in Houston. What it needed, it seems, is a victim. And it found a pretty gosh-darn perfect one in Charlie Prestwood.”
Read Kantrow’s entire column here.
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Instead of writing about how it's the 100th interview, maybe write about what exactly happened to that employee.
I have YET to see one single interview done with an employee - to hear THEIR side of the story on what has happened.
Not hearing about any of it creates the false impression that no one was really hurt "all that bad".
On top of that, when you see employee quoted with "it's his 97th interview" you wonder "huh??". Seriously. Did I miss something? If that guy has spoken to 96 other outlets, obviously someone is not printing his story.
Bloggers are the public's last hope in getting a story "out there". The media is more interested in following a pre-set agenda than in telling it like it is.
It's a pretty pathetic time right now for the media - but I can't feel sorry for them. They kow-tow to corporate owners who only care about protecting their shareholders - and not in what the media's job is, which is in reporting the truth.
Your motto should be: Tell the truth, then run like hell. You can always get a job somewhere else - but at least you never had to sell out to keep your job.