October 13th, 2005
FoxNews takes credibility hit after disclosure on anti-ODF commentary
By way of one of IBM’s Bob Sutor’s blog entries that came through my RSS firehose this morning comes this damning report on FoxNews.com regarding Massachusetts’ adoption of the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Some how, I missed it when it was first published two weeks ago. The report (Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument), which takes Massachusetts officials out to the woodshed for a spanking because of its decision (and quotes ZDNet blogger George Ou in the process!), was contributed to FoxNews by Americans for Technology Leadership executive director Jim Prendergast. By their very nature, just about any commentary that takes an anti-ODF position is inherently pro-Microsoft since it’s file formats are pretty much the only alternative. In response, the column drew a torrent of commentary from the digerati. Since Prendergast’s contributed commentary was published however, the following disclosure was added Prendergast’s bio at the bottom of the page:
An earlier version of this column failed to disclose that Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL. Other founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA and Citizens Against Government Waste.
Oops.
