Quote, unquote

The US, outsourcing, BPO visa fee increase story that seemingly broke last week was held up as an event that could impact many IT and allied industries including market researchers — even though the news was old. How did an old story get so much play? The story is that last Wednesday the country’s leading news agency put out a story on the US visa fee hike based on a release. Though the news was stale, it was picked up by many online news sites. The public relations agency of a research and consulting firm even called journalists in Bangalore alerting them to the story and informing them that they had researchers ready to discuss the issue and even emailed some comments. Come evening, there was a change. The same PR consultant called to say, “Hi, we have sources in many places and we understand it is an old story. So, please don’t take the quote. Thank You.”