The most blatant recent example of the rampant media bias against direct marketing surely was the lopsided coverage given to the more than two-year-long legal battle between anti-spammer Mark Mumma and vacation marketer Omega World Travel.
You know the drill: All marketers are scumbag spammers until proven otherwise.
In January 2005, after Mumma received a half-dozen e-mails from Omega subsidiary Cruise.com, he sent a letter threatening to sue unless the company paid him an arbitrarily set $6,250. When Omega refused to pay, Mumma began smearing Cruise.com and Omega’s owners, Gloria and Daniel Bohan, by calling them spammers on his Web site.
In response, Omega sued Mumma for $3.8 million for defamation, among other things. Mumma then turned around and sued Omega under Oklahoma law and the federal Can Spam Act.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s summary judgment against Mumma, concurring that Can Spam pre-empted Mumma’s claims under Oklahoma law, and that inaccuracies in Cruise.com’s return-address information were too trivial to be considered in violation of federal law.
Examples of hack-job reporting in this case are legion. For example, when Omega sued Mumma for defamation, Ars Technica published a factually challenged opinion piece in March 2005 headed
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