The Verge is updating their public ethics policy "to be clearer in our interactions with public relations and corporate communications professionals"

thought this was a really interesting look into what happens behind the scenes of a lot of reporting, particularly reporting that is tied to "company announces X" as a lot of tech journalism is

More than one big company insists on holding product briefings “on background with no attribution” which means no one can properly report what company executives say about their own new products during marketing events.

Multiple big tech companies insist on having PR staffers quoted as “sources familiar with the situation” even though they are paid spokespeople for the most powerful companies in the world.

A big tech company insisted on describing the upgrade requirements for its new operating system on background. Details which it then repeatedly changed… on background.

(this one sure as hell sounds like Microsoft and Windows 11)

emphasis added:

This list could go on and on — the clear pattern is that tech companies have uniformly adopted a strategy of obfuscating information behind background. It’s also easy to see why companies like to abuse background: they can provide their point of view to the media without being accountable for it. Instead, journalists have to act like they magically know things, and readers have to guess who is trustworthy and who is not.