The first reaction when someone says something damaging to your company's products or reputation is to respond quickly, "get out in front of the story" as communications experts often advised in the past.
Flynn has also been wrapped up in stories about communications with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
"Anyone can speculate, but there are a set of facts that tell a very different story," said Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign.
"That is false, patently untrue, no one at this campaign was involved in this story," said Perry communications director Ray Sullivan.
According to the Times story, an eBay communications staffer, Young Mi Kim, was preparing Whitman for a media interview, when the CEO got angry and "forcefully pushed her".
Last week, an awful story of failures in communications, missed opportunities and tragic circumstances had emerged, but many questions remained.
The bottom line is, with every follow-up news story issued by our communications team, Dr Sen Gupta receives even more inquiries.
Although May promised the conference she was not making the story up, the judicial communications office, which represents senior judges, insisted the tale was not true and said it had told May's department as much.
"We want 'Love Alarm,' the TV series, to exhibit the liveliness and expression of emotions, with visual treatments that will reflect Ms Chon's vision when she created the story," Lee, Netflix's communications VP, said in a news release.
Thelar Pekar, a communications expert, writes: "Story sharing, if done correctly, results in chaos.... Story begets story, which begets story, which eventually... begets chaos.
A few stories up, ShoreTel, a communications company that counts Shake Shack among its clients, also recently signed a lease for a full-floor space.
