“No Comment” is something people often say when they don’t want journalists to write anything.
It doesn’t work. When lead trainer Guy was a very young journalist the chair of a major technology company told him he didn’t want to comment on something and he didn’t want to see that coming out as “NAME declined to comment” either.
At the tender age of 24 or so, Guy allowed himself to be pushed into this and didn’t put it in. Which was wrong as stating that the chair had declined to comment would have been a perfectly accurate statement of what took place in the conversation.
The chair in question was presumably savvy enough to realise that “no comment” never sounds completely neutral. Here’s a short video with another example – seriously, try never to say it. It really doesn’t work.
