“I’m not sure I’ll have anything interesting to say.”
As soon as I heard Kent Gale utter those words, I knew it was going to be a great interview. Because that’s how it happens, almost every time. It’s the people who undersell that have the goods.
And sure enough, Gale did. He talked about how KLAS was conceptualized, the tweaks they’ve made along the way to improve their product, and what it’s been like working with his son and watching him mature into a leader. He also talked about the passion his company has for interoperability, which was evident in the way he described the summit held last year.
But what really grabbed me was when Gale opened up about the skeptics — the people who tried to shut down his shop. Since the beginning, the company designed to “transparently measure how well vendors kept their promises and met expectations” has been accused of skewing scores in favor of certain vendors, even accepting bribes to do so.
The accusers? The companies that aren’t happy with how their products scored, despite the fact that it’s their own users who provide the input. But their investigations — which have included teams of lawyers in some cases — have come up empty, said Gale, who spoke proudly of the quality control measures his team has in place.
“The vendors have tried valiantly to get us out of this industry,” he noted, but “we’ve survived, and what’s protected us is the provider community,” a group that is counting on KLAS to objectively “monitor and measure and report what’s happening.”
According to Gale, not only has his company never even sniffed a bribe (a scenario that’s downright laughable if you’ve ever met anyone from KLAS) but, in fact, the vendors that have shelled out the most money for reports have rarely scored well.
It’s a head-scratcher, right? At first it may seem that way, but when you really look at the situation, it becomes clear. It’s always the ones with something to hide that want to squelch the truth. We’ve seen it with politicians, big corporations, and even in sports — when a person (or organization) wants to silence you, that’s when you know you’re on to something.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a piece that took a hard look at the NFL’s concussion research, stating that it was “far more flawed than previously known.” According to the Times, the NFL omitted more than 100 cases from its studies, including severe injuries to quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman, and calculated the rate of concussions using incomplete data.
I devoured the article, which also looked into the league’s ties with big tobacco. It was the type of investigative reporting newspapers used to do all the time — the type of article I’d cut out and bring to my journalism class.
The NFL, however, didn’t quite share my views. In fact, the league that blocked the family of a deceased player from his Hall of Fame induction ceremony (a player who, by the way, had suffered traumatic brain injuries that may have contributed to his depression) was demanding a retraction. The Times article, it claimed, was “contradicted by clear facts” and filled with “innuendo and speculation.”
Now this was no small thing — the big, bad NFL is extremely powerful, and it can make life difficult for the Times and its affiliates when football season rolls around. But in throwback newspaper fashion, the paper stood firm. Instead of hiding, it issued a statement standing by each and every point it made and, in the process, made the NFL look quite foolish.
It just goes to show that the ones who are quickest to issue threats are often the ones with the most to hide, whereas those who quietly do their jobs are often the ones with the best information.
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