Seattle Times columnist Jonathan Martin, annoyed when an employee of Waggener Edstrom said Martin would be "inaccurate" if he quoted the employee by name, instead wrote a column calling attention to the accusation.
The Oct. 9 column told of Martin's attempts to speak to T-Mobile CEO Robert Dotson about employee Joe Mallahan, who is running for mayor of Seattle.
T-Mobile, a cell phone company with 36,000 U.S. employees, is part of Deutsch Telekom of Germany. Both T-Mobile and WE are based in Bellevue, Wash.
Martin wanted to interview Dotson about the candidacy of Mallahan but an e-mail from WE staffer "Danielle" said that no such interview would be allowed.
"We respect Joe's efforts to run for public office," said the e-mail, adding that "beyond that T-Mobile has no further comment."
That was o.k. with Martin but what struck him was this order from Danielle:
"Please note that if you plan to use this statement I am not a T-Mobile spokesperson and to use my name would be inaccurate. If you are required to include attribution please do so to a ‘T-Mobile Spokesperson.' Thank you and have a great weekend."
Wrote Martin: "To be clear, the statement is from a ‘T-Mobile spokesperson,' but the spokesperson has no name, and saying that the spokesperson does have a name would be ‘inaccurate.'"
Martin said co-worker Craig Welch recently received the same type of reply from a Starbucks PR person—an order to use only "A Starbucks spokesperson" and not the PR person's name.
Martin said he sought comments about what Mallahan did at T-Mobile from several current and fellow employees. He got some replies but none from those who supervised Mallahan. |