"Microsoft expressed disappointment at our views and said “a better story” would have been the positive benefits OpenXML..."

--Microsoft pressures ITWire for better OOXML publicity in 2007

Recently, we have seen yet again how Microsoft tames journalists. If the company cannot earn good publicity, then it attempts to buy it. If it cannot buy the media company, then it turns to individuals.

Promotional journalism hasn't a place in this world, but this appears to have been the case in Malaysia, not just in Australia [1, 2]. We have already covered many examples of this. Here is another one.

Another funny thing happened. Someone had a copy of yesterday's Tech&U which had a feature article by one of the journalists who got a free ticket to Washington. The article is currently online here "Charting path of OpenXML." We all had a chuckle because we all saw right through it and one of the attendees said "This isn't an article, its a press release from a vendor!"

There is more from the same blog about poor journalism and articles that are promotional.

In essence, the article title which states “RosettaNet in Aggressive Move to Push OOXML Tech” actually should instead read “RosettaNet in Aggressive move to Push Microsoft Office 2007”. And this is a fair position for RosettaNet to take, as Microsoft Office 2007 provides an affordable interface to interacting with the RosettaNet platform the the growing SME market.

It is not about OOXML's special features. Its about Microsoft Office features. Its very similar to the Halal Hub Open XML System. OOXML is just tacked on for marketing purposes to lead up to this months BRM.

We mentioned Malaysia quite a lot in January, primarily due to the fact that many article with Microsoft's venom came from there [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. ⬆