This is all too common a pattern nowdays - instead of reporting something that happens the press reports something that somebody (usually extremely biased and frequently anonymous) said about something that might happen, or, as frequently turns out later, didn't happen. It's much easier and cheaper, but its contribution to the society is net negative.
How do you propose Casey should have challenged or verified whether the Aquila flew as well as claimed? Any data about the craft would come from FB, any paper describing it would be published by FB, any researchers who worked on it would work at FB. Anyone else who might be an "objective" source would be under NDA. Companies are very thorough about this sort of thing.
A journalist doing an investigative piece on the Aquila would not take Zuckerberg's words as gospel, but that doesn't mean those words are unimportant. This was a news piece, and CEOs speaking publicly about an R&D project, and answering questions and so on, is an opportunity to provide a different kind of value. Readers are curious about details companies don't always provide, and also require context that isn't always obvious. Reporters do this work too - it's not all cloak and dagger stuff, whistleblowers and top-secret dossiers.
Aquila was a solar-powered drone that FB wanted to use to create a laser-powered internet for developing countries. That's an interesting story that should be told - and not just by the company, which would leave out important parts like opposition to Internet.org or indeed the unfinished nature of the aircraft. That's important work for reporters as well - filling in those gaps so that readers' understanding of a topic or event is more full than it would be had only people with a stake in it done so.
I also have not seen the pattern you describe and am not sure it's as endemic as you suggest.
Then don't report it as fact. With all blatant editorializing going on right now, simple "we've been told by company representatives that X but we have no independent verification of this" would already do. And also maybe give company the incentive to actually make their claims verifiable.
> How do you propose Casey should have challenged or verified whether the Aquila flew as well as claimed
Maybe he couldn't verify it. Then he should have told "we don't know what happened, only thing we know what biased sources told us, so that's all we have for now". Maybe less sensational but more true.
> Reporters do this work too - it's not all cloak and dagger stuff, whistleblowers and top-secret dossiers.
True. But just refusing to parrot the press release would already be a step forward - if the company knows their unverified press releases would always have asterisk next to it, they'd have an incentive to make them more verifiable. Or at least the honest ones would. And thus we'd get a way to distinguish between honest companies and cheaters.
> That's an interesting story that should be told
Sure, what should not be told is what actually didn't happen except in company's press release - and the reporter reported it as something that did happen, because they wanted to juice up the story and pretend they have more access than they actually did. As a human, I can understand that weakness, as a consumer of the press I can not forgive it.
How did Bloomberg do it? By not publishing immediately, checking other sources. Also known as journalism.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/facebook-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-27/after-goo...
They, like every other outlet, covered the news with the resources immediately available, then followed up later when information became available that led them to question the completeness of Facebook's account and details of the project.
If a man needs to stretch the language to conceal a trivial event that is publicly known, what else is he hiding? It's weird on many levels, as yakking about the disappointment of a pet/vanity project's stumble on it's ascent to greatness is a great distraction from the substance of Facebook.
it all started when every pizzeria became the best pizza in the city; and just goes off from there.
Though Newton hadn’t witnessed the test flight in Yuma, Arizona—no members of the press were invited—he believed Zuckerberg’s account of it. When his article was published, it reported that Aquila “was so stable that they kept it in the air for 90 minutes before landing it safely.”
Months later, however, a Bloomberg story revealed that the flight hadn’t gone so smoothly after all—Aquila had crashed. While the craft had indeed stayed aloft for longer than intended, high winds tore a chunk out of a wing, leading to a crash landing.
Interesting episode! It would be interesting to know if this was intentional deception or incompetent ignorance on Zuck's part.