Great article by Paul Carr on how AOL didn’t actually ask TechCrunch to “tone down” their post about the marketing strategy behind the movie Source Code:

Apparently someone at Summit didn’t like the “snark” in Alexia’s post. They passed on their concerns to their Moviefone contact in the hope that, as an AOL sister site, Moviefone would be able to lean on Alexia to tone it down. Sure enough, someone at Moviefone emailed Alexia…

All in all, a great read. Paul’s honest-to-god assessment of the situation and criticism of AOL are praise-worthy:

Actually, Patricia, you only have two loyalties: one is to your readers and one is to the company that signs your paychecks. That’s it. You do not – emphatically _do not_ – have a responsibility to “stay on good terms” with movie studios. On the contrary, when a movie company asks you to try to strong-arm a college into dialing down her editorial voice, it’s in your best interests as a professional editor to tell them to go fuck themselves.