I, for one, fail to see how this would gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity [0].

This article details facts that are uncontroversial and already covered in the original article. The added precisions don't change anything to the story.

(Some people at) Samsung first goofed (misclassified reporters as supporters) then went postal instead of making up for it (threatened to leave them 6000+ Km from home on their own devices). Unacceptable behavior at the individual level, PR blunder at a larger one. Nothing in the article submitted here chalenges that.

Folks, please read the articles before upvoting.

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[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The most likely explanation is that there was a communication mistake. The bloggers wanted to come as a Reporter but on the German end they were reported as promoters.

Still the reaction from Samsung was way overboard and Nokia really collected the goodwill from this by offering the return tickets.

That's the way it is with tech reporters, the other side of the story is always never revealed. Imagine, if this guy hadn't published this article? I, as an average reader would have thought Samsung is a scumbag company.

I don't support Samsung nor am I against them, just that we need to take anything that comes from a Tech Blogger/Journalist with a pinch of salt. Because, they know their audience is huge and they can manipulate anything to their advantage (For eg: Page views, popularity)

Actually, I lost faith in fair journalism after Techcrunch's posts a few months back. So I always wait for the other side of the story to be published.

I am not sure this adds anything. I got all this from the original articles. He was clearly labelled wrong, either due to a mistake on his behalf or on Samsung's. If he new he certainly should have fixed it before he left. If he didn't then, what can you do?

Stranding someone in a foreign city is never a solution.

The original article claimed that the bloggers had repeatedly insisted on being reporters - not that they were unaware of the distinction.

This writer either missed that or is ignoring it as inconvenient.

well the story still doesn't add up as the original article said the blogger /had/ registered as a reporter. To be honest I get the impression that this article is manipulating the reader for page views.

Nothing new in this world, where a corporate is reported being wrong in just a few minutes, but when the actual truth comes out, no one comes in defense but they keep moaning for a few days until the entire story gets forgotten.

Still, wait for Samsung to bring out their proofs and then we will see what the guys have to say.

What's the actual truth here? I don't get a sense that this post is inconsistent with the original accounts. Clearly the bloggers thought they were going as reporters, and possibly Samsung thought it was sending them as promoters. The proper way for Samsung to have rectified it was to either change their designation to 'reporter' (best), or send them home (ok). Acting like dicks and leaving them stranded in Berlin was about the worst thing they could have done from an ethical, and PR perspective.

Do we have any similar stories about MS, Apple, Google, etc? (I'm just curious)

Maybe MS and Google, definitely not Apple. You can say many things about them, but their PR team is locked down. Apple only started reaching out to bloggers very recently (I seem to remember a Gruber post about it a few months ago after the iPad launch), and even then it's only to 'blockbuster' bloggers. Apple's 'outreach' tends to work rather differently to MS or Google.