This was the case today when a story broke about internet infrastructure being attacked:
If you want to read stories about technology, best to either read a balanced report from the experts such as computerworld.com or don’t bother.
When reading mainstream media it is often best to read scare stories from the bottom up. This is how guardian.co.uk ended the same story: "There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or our computing systems at this time," the (US homeland security) department said in a statement…
"The main thing is that there was very little impact on the general public, the servers were able to hold up against the attacks. The Internet in general was designed to even withstand a nuclear attack," Zully Ramzan, a researcher at Symantec Security Response, told CNET News.com.”
Zully sounds like a reasonable person.
The ATTACK angle was taken up on the guardian technology blog quoting another security company staffer, Graham Cluley. I've met Graham, he knows his stuff as far I know. Graham received an unusual level of exposure - even for him - by saying things about this story such as ""seems to have been the most serious attack against these domain name servers since December 2002 " and his company is quoted as saying "that a successful assault could have resulted in the global suspension of website access..." this is carefully structured and not untrue, but it is presented as if it were a possibility when it is accepted fact that there was no chance of this happening. Eventually we get to the rub. Buy more AV software and don't let the internet collapse under the weight of botnets. The whole thing is a sales pitch. In this case as so often the real point of the PR blitz is to sell software under the guise of offering independent comment.
That security companies want to pump out press releases warning of impending disaster at every turn is fair enough. Security companies sell security goods and its all part of their game. And maybe you can expect that sometimes a pressurised and inexperienced journo in the trades might just report dire warnings as fact, but a good reporter shoudn't fall for the “Crisis averted with more string says string maker” line. It should be ignored and such "experts" should be avoided or questioned more thoroughly.
