Boeing Fires Back at Al Jazeera Over Damning Documentary
Jeff Edwards September 12, 2014
Boeing released a strident statement questioning the accuracy and fairness of the new Al Jazeera documentary Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787.
Al Jazeera’s recent documentary, Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787, raised troubling accusations about Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner program. On Wednesday, prior to the documentary’s airing on Al Jazeera English, Boeing released a statement with some strong accusations about Al Jazeera’s quality standards.
Boeing did not deny that the ambitious Dreamliner project had some missteps along the way to becoming the company’s flagship aircraft. “The 787 is an outstanding airplane delivering value to our customers, but we have also talked candidly in public about its challenging development process,” a portion of the statement read. “There are no tougher critics about our early performance than Boeing.”
In the statement, Boeing claims it went out of its way to accommodate the filmmakers by “facilitating factory access, interviews, and providing full and open responses to their questions.”
The company, however, takes issue with the documentary’s producers, who Boeing says misrepresented the project as an impartial piece about the Dreamliner’s inception, production challenges and current status. “Unfortunately, the reporting team appears to have chosen to take advantage of our trust and openness and abused their position from the outset by deliberately misrepresenting the purpose, objective and scope of their planned coverage.”
Boeing reserved its harshest criticism for the off-the-record and hidden camera footage featured in the documentary, stating:
This specious production appears to have ignored the factual information provided by Boeing and instead based the majority of its reporting on unnamed sources pursuing their own agendas and a disgruntled former employee engaged in a legal dispute with Boeing. In one instance, the producers resorted to ambush tactics normally seen only in tabloid-style TV news. The anonymous sources the TV program depends on are clearly working with those who seek to harm Boeing and its workers.
The statement from Boeing also provides previously published quotes that contradict statements made by on-the-record sources featured in the documentary. Former Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) President Cynthia Cole is quoted in the Al Jazeera piece as saying the company “shortchanged the engineering process.”
Cole’s remarks, Boeing noted, are very different from those she made about the 787’s first flight in 2009, when she praised the inaugural flight as “a testament to the skill, hard work and diligence Boeing employees put in,” adding that “Boeing returned to engineering, and that’s what made today possible and successful.”
[Photo: iStock]
Boeing's denial is incredibly weak. Their argument seems to be: 1) We (Boeing) thought this was a puff piece. When you (Al Jazeera) started asking real questions, we did not want to answer. 2) You (Al Jazeera) should have used our (Boeing's) press releases and materials, not do your own investigation. 3) Cynthia Cole's comments at the time of the 787's first flight, a program in which she was not directly involved, contradict her statements about a Boeing memo she saw years later that indicated quality procedures were being altered to speed production, two different things. Corporate America has gotten so used to the media serving them that if anyone questions what they are doing, they do not know how to respond. "Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787" does not have any indication of a specific critical failure. It mostly underscores modern America - the only thing that matters is the stock price; everything else is secondary. The 787s may hold together just fine, or they may end up like CI 611, where a poorly done repair manifested itself in a mid-air breakup after 22 years.
al jazeera.....'nuff said
Boeing is Still The Best! Just tighten it up a bit...