Let's avoid our own bias of automatically believing the engineers are in the right; they are fallible people, no more or less honest or prone to error than journalists.
Every news story that breaks, involving any person or industry, gets the same response: It's false, they didn't ask us, etc. etc. Therefore, that response is not an indication that something is wrong (or right); the response tells us nothing in itself.
"they are fallible people, no more or less honest or prone to error than journalists."
As people perhaps, but there's a big difference in how prone to error someone is when speaking within their area of expertise than when speaking outside of that area.
The problem with most journalists is that they're required to write on many different subjects, write for an audience whose only exposure to the subject will be a few thousand word article, and write all of this on a deadline that is sometimes just a few hours or days. You can't really understand a subject under those constraints, and it's inevitable that misconceptions will creep in.
You're right. Everyone is fallible and I'm all for mistakes being made — We are all human. I also agree that the immediate snap response tells us nothing.
Based on the BI story, I know a few people that have actually already uninstalled WhatApp for fear of a backdoor. What I wish is that there was a better way for these two entities to communicate rather than finger pointing and name calling so that we as consumers of both media and technology can read a better more comprehensive narrative.
Name calling results in reassigning fear. People are afraid of the unknown and so try to box it up in something digestible they can fear less. We tend to blame others because it's easy and cheap to do so. If you are wrong, that means I'm right and so then I wasn't wrong about it and don't have to think about it anymore. And you are wrong, so why would I think about it again?
I think it's interesting the entities are not two, but many and one at the same time. Elon Musk is an individual and he is also part of the press process. My rationale is that the press includes everyone in the press, including the people writing the stories and the people in the stories.
Let's avoid our own bias of automatically believing the engineers are in the right; they are fallible people, no more or less honest or prone to error than journalists.
Every news story that breaks, involving any person or industry, gets the same response: It's false, they didn't ask us, etc. etc. Therefore, that response is not an indication that something is wrong (or right); the response tells us nothing in itself.