HP covers up Gulfstream buys

EVERY SO often when you report something, you realize you are wrong. Usually, the subject of your story writes you an angry letter telling you the subject of your story is dead wrong, or why someone has an axe to grind against them. That is the good way. They can also send you a nasty legal letter fom some firm with 4 names and an esquire in there somewhere. That generally just annoys us. You tend to realize you are right when you don't hear anything, or you see a massive coverup starting to emerge.

In the recent high hitting HP executoys for Carly story here we're pretty sure we were spot on when we heard that in many management meetings we were the first order of business. The internal memos dictating how to talk to the press about this situation didn't help the HP case either.

We started talking to people who use planes for a living, and a picture started to emerge that showed good reasons here and there why HP might have replaced those 3 year old jets with newer ones. While we were digging a bit deeper into this avenue, HP did something that analysts of press relations tend to point to as suicidally stupid. Rather than sending us a letter saying ‘you are wrong, please retract the story for the following reasons', something which we would have been more than happy to do, they aimed for the foot and shot. Yes, they covered it up.

If you go to the site now, the planes that were once proudly listed under HP by name have been mysteriously changed. They are now listed as GC AIR LLC, a company which google shows a having owned planes in the past. Rather than print a story possibly justifying the HP purchases, which was planned for tomorrow, they just pointed out how right the original stories were. Stupid PR people, no cookie. Maybe if Carly sees a nice Sanders class yacht, she will lay you twits off in the next round. µ