"The author of the email, posted on ZDNet in a Talkback forum on the Microsoft antitrust trial, claimed her name was Michelle Bradley and that she had "retired" from Microsoft last week.

""A verbal memo [no email allowed] was passed around the MS campus encouraging MS employee's to post to ZDNet articles like this one," the email said.

""The theme is 'Microsoft is responsible for all good things in computerdom.' The government has no right to prevent MS from doing anything. Period. The 'memo' suggests we use fictional names and state and to identify ourselves as students," the author claimed."

--Wired Magazine

Summary: The CBS-owned ZDNet continues to hire people who have worked or are currently working for Microsoft and unsurprisingly enough they use their newly-acquired positions to praise Microsoft and bash Microsoft's competition, usually with no disclosure of their conflict of interest

Microsoft's infamous strategy (which it privately admits to) of conquering the technology media has evolved. A week and a half ago we showed how CBS had hired yet another Microsoft person to cover Microsoft matters (or Microsoft's competition). We have lost count of the number of people with such a conflict of interest, especially in CBS (far worse than any other large network). As a side note, CBS also hired senior people from the CIA, which helps explain its grooming of Microsoft's super-special partner (the NSA) and the pro-war agenda, especially as of late.

Having taken control of ZDNet, the CBS network has become absolutely flooded with Microsoft staff past and present (some work for both at the same time) and days ago we noticed Eileen Brown writing for ZDNet. What's not evident in the page (not in her intro, but in only in her disclosures, a page away) is that she too comes from Microsoft. The separate page (not even HTML) clearly states that "She worked at Microsoft from 2001 to 2009." So CBS has essentially hired yet another Microsoft propagandist for articles that cover Microsoft, like this new example. Bing marketing. How much marketing and grooming should CBS be allowed to get away with? How long before it's widely recognised that CBS is not a serious news network but corporate media working for selected corporations?

Here is another new example.

Longtime Microsoft booster Mary Branscombe ridicules people who self host and promotes "cloud" lunacy. Much of the time she just spends promoting Microsoft and it should be no surprise as she has done that for decades. To quote her own intro:

Mary has been a technology writer for nearly two decades, covering everything from early versions of Windows and Office to the first smartphones, the arrival of the web and most things inbetween.

In her blog there is not even a effort at providing information. She is making an effort to appear balanced and historically she has also smeared Microsoft's rivals. There are many more examples like that and no site demonstrates that quite as clearly as ZDNet (with about a dozen Microsoft-connected writers); CBS is bad, CNET is worse, but ZDNet is by far the worst and all are operated by the same company. It's like advertising and agenda disguised as "news". It runs 24/7 in many countries. One might even call that "AstroTurfing".

It's one thing when Microsoft promotes Microsoft, but it's another when a media company pretends to be a source of news but actually promotes Microsoft and employs people from Microsoft. Here is a new example of Microsoft staff bamboozling the media. It is Michel van der Bel, not to be confused with ECMA's Microsoft mole, van der Beld. Here is what Ahonen has to say about him:

Microsoft Lies. Then there is the perennial Microsoft propaganda and lies machine. On May 23, 2011, the Microsoft mafia decided to spin a story about Nokia Lumia Windows success in China. They picked the wrong target when they compared the supposed success to the iPhone in China. Microsoft mouthpiece Michel van der Bel (Microsoft COO of China) got himself quoted in the press claiming that Windows Phone smartphones like Lumia 800c were outselling the iPhone in China. You don't spread lies like that on my watch! So I debunked that sillyness with 18 separate items of proof. When the numbers came out two months later, I was of course correct and Mr van der Bel has not been seen in the press about this ever again. But for a brief moment there as this alternate reality created by the Microsoft Imaginarium. Who debunked them comprehensively and immediately for you to keep your Apple facts straight? Yeah.

It is very common for sites like those of CBS (which owns a lot of influential news sites) to parrot such technology disinformation and unsurprisingly, as CBS hires many people from Microsoft, it is inevitable that these lies from Microsoft will be relayed to the press, enter news feeds, and ultimately change perceptions based on lies.

Avoid CBS. It's not journalism. ⬆