The first real news report about the ‘two Dr. Daos’ story comes from The Independent. It’s in the opinion section, but it’s a start:

Everyone knows that if your client is centre-stage during a particularly bad case of negative PR, the most tempting solution is to move the spotlight. But even public relations crisis teams now advise against giving in to temptation. The consensus has been for a while that the best solution is to own up, apologise, take responsibility and move on (preferably with a well-timed positive announcement a month or so later) rather than scapegoating one person, especially when that one person is a victim. United seems to have only just got that memo.

And what if right-wing media appoints itself your light technician and moves the spotlight for you? Then it’s your responsibility to make sure it doesn’t look like you’re orchestrating a smear campaign behind the scenes. Questions have inevitably started to be asked: who dug up those details about David Dao’s apparent medical misdemeanour or the gay sex he supposedly had with a younger man, and why? Did they even check that those details related to the David Dao who was dragged off Flight 3411 in Chicago? There is presently confusion about whether the man on the United flight was actually David Thanh Duc Dao, quite possibly another person entirely to David Anh Duy Dao, the man with the criminal records.

It’s unclear who did that digging and whether serious mistakes in accuracy were made, but there’s one thing any decent human being should be able to agree on: it doesn’t matter what David Dao did or didn’t do in his past, because none of it is relevant to whether or not he should have been left in hospital after boarding a flight home. Acting like his history might make it “less bad” to beat him up is a dangerous position to take with serious consequences. Where, indeed, is the dirt-digging being done on the United staff who handled everything so badly, the security team who caused Dao serious damage, or the CEO who acted so dismissively about the entire episode?

If this turns out to be true, there are going to be defamation suits delivered far and wide.