>If you're a reporter and someone from company X comes to you saying they have important issues involving issue Y in product Z, you'll probably assume that they have significant expertise in issue Y - even if their involvement is only in some unrelated subcomponent of the actual product.
At most companies, that scenario is probably going to get you in trouble if Company X hasn't actually OKd you to talk to that reporter. There's probably some grey area where you just wrote something on social media--but that's a reason to be cautious on social media.
There are very few companies that are likely to be ok with random employees talking to media, maybe not the same result as a FAANG, but I can't see avoiding any repercussions (e.g if a bank employee goes off and talks to the news presenting themselves as a rep from the bank, I don't see that going well)
* frowned == new job
I'm a software engineer, but if I went to talk to a reporter about UI issues in a product, ignoring the obvious correct dismissal, I have nothing to do with anything UI related (I haven't worked on UI level anything in it must be the vicinity of a decade, and the UI stuff I did do was a super specific subset). If I'm presented as "an engineer working on Z" talking about UI, it would be reasonable to assume that I was a person who knew what they were talking about.
Hence a company X might reasonably feel that they need to clarify what I actually did (or did not) do.