Corporate Synergy and CNN’s Credibility

Amongst the headaches that must be resolved during this final week before Aliyah is the cancellation of my cellphone account. For whatever reason, I am (unjustly, I believe) subject to a $150 early termination fee of my Sprint PCS account. They informed me that they would waive the fee if I could demonstrate proof that I’m moving overseas. I’ve got all sorts of papers, in Hebrew and English, that basically provide a ton of circumstantial evidence that I’m moving, and was going to try to bring it all to a local Sprint Store to try to see if they’d accept it.
Today, though, I thought I’d try a different tactic. I called Customer Service, and asked the representative to check out the clip on CNN.com. That was all they needed to waive the fee.
While I was happy that it saved me $150, it leaves me very nervous about the natural trust that people place in the larger mainstream media outlets. I wonder what would have happened if it would have been a Reuters interview.