[StavrosK]

For me, it's about how certain you are about what's going on. If you've flown with an airline and have seen their economy class cabin, then you're okay to write about it without talking to anyone. You presumably didn't fly with this startup, though (unless I missed it in the post), so I'm wondering what their side of the story is.

It's probably "err, yes, you might get the death penalty", but I don't know that, because nobody from the company was reached for comment.

[tprophet]

I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of press (and certainly blog) articles are written without actually talking to anyone; they're based on public information and--at most--email requests.

If the founders were doing the right thing here, they probably wouldn't have felt the need to dodge all my questions. I'd have gotten clear answers with evidence to back them up. Normal companies do this.

Also, if Airmule wanted an interview, they could have replied asking for a phone call and giving me their phone number.

For folks who claim I didn't clearly represent myself: My Twitter handle identifies me as a Seat 31B blogger, I emailed them from my seat31b.com address, and I publicly stated on Twitter that I was planning to blog about this. I don't know how it could possibly be any more clear. Yes, like many people in the startup community I do more than one thing (I am also involved with multiple startups) but given that these very different lines of business (a dating app and an information security consulting firm) I don't think there could be any reasonable confusion.

None of this actually happened, so I think it's pretty clear what's going on here.