Thanks for the response, Sanswired.
I understand your point.
I personally think that Rob used language too carelessly in the line "...opinion presented as fact (particularly the lies by Jones and Sands)..." [see nilremerlin post 65763]. Perhaps his standards in word choice, as for most of us, are looser in e-mail correspondence.
Note how inoffensive it would become if instead of "lies by" Rob had said "attributions to", or even "misleading attributions to". Rob had already characterized the attributions as "opinion presented as fact".
I suspect that what bothered Rob the most in the portion of the article attributed to Jones was not a direct quote, but the line reading "Jones says that, based on what Sands saw, it was a sign that things have not gone well since his departure."
On a lighter topic, the fuss over Rob's use of "our door" [see nilremerlin post 65763 again] brings to mind the fuss resulting some time ago when Rocky referred to Huff as "our CEO". Some poster(s) took this as virtual proof that Rocky was an employee of GlobeTel.
- guy6