Why and how we covered the GrabGas controversy

The GrabGas team earlier this year. Photo credit: GrabGas.

On August 27, Julian Ee’s bombshell blog post about how the founders of cooking gas delivery startup GrabGas supposedly screwed him over went viral and the whole thing was the talk of town by the end of day.

Tech in Asia and lifestyle tech publication Vulcan Post quickly picked it up (and rightly so for Vulcan Post, which was mentioned in Julian’s post). e27, however, said it intentionally missed the boat – “let the tide subside” – as its writer Kevin McSpadden shared in a piece a day after the issue exploded.

Julian’s blog post, detailing his grievances with the founders over equity, GrabGas’ alleged bloated KPIs, and its lack of transparency, was certainly damaging to the startup’s reputation. Kevin said no one outside of GrabGas could have confirmed if Julian was telling the truth and readers would have moved on to the next story by the time any confirmation was made. “Do I publish for guaranteed traffic? Even while potentially promoting misleading information?” he asked.

We understand Kevin’s dilemma. In a digital world where the battle for audience is down to the second, the media often trades accuracy for speed just to ride the wave of a viral story.

In the case of GrabGas, yes, if Julian’s story turned out to be false, it would have done unwarranted and irreversible harm to the company.

But what if the story was true? Then Julian was seeking recourse against GrabGas, and it would have been wrong to ignore it.

How then should the media have covered it? For Tech in Asia, the key was to try to verify what we could and present a balanced story.

Was it newsworthy?

By the time we picked up Julian’s post, it was already going viral. There was no question the story was newsworthy. The fact that people were talking about it and sharing it means they cared about it.

It was also a matter of public interest. If you’re a consumer, wouldn’t you want to know if a company you’re buying from is doing business ethically? There was a clear conflict between the CTO and the rest of the team. That’s another criteria for newsworthiness.

And Julian – granted he must be infuriated and biased – was still a reliable source because he had access to key info about the company. Heck, he controlled the code base.

This was a rare instance when a prominent member of a startup broke ranks and unleashed a story that smashed the veneer of public relations.

Initial vetting

But then we had only one side – Julian’s. We didn’t know if he was being honest, lying, or exaggerating even. This is where the concept of verifiable facts come in.

If someone tells you: “don’t go outside, it’s raining,” but you want to know for sure, what do you do? You look out the window.

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