Microsoft's VP of communications says media coverage has been too harsh lately

There has certainly been a ton of media coverage surrounding the retirement announcement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Friday, and admittedly, much of it has concentrated on the mistakes that some people feel Ballmer made during his tenure leading the company.

Without naming any names, including Ballmer's, the VP of Corporate Communications at Microsoft, Frank Shaw, wrote a lengthy post on the company's official blog today that took much of the media to task for their coverage of Ballmer's announcement and of Microsoft under his leadership.

The post, titled, "On Dickens, Rashomon and Twitter" features Shaw quoting A Tale of Two Cities and mentioning the classic Akira Kurosawa film (not to mention the recent CGI animated movie "Hoodwinked") to support his argument that perhaps some members of the media have not given Microsoft a fair share since Ballmer's retirement announcement. Shaw states:

One approach has been to focus exclusively on some of our consumer businesses, and then judge us harshly while ignoring the successes we’ve had elsewhere. Another approach has been to go a step further, criticize our lack of “focus” and suggest that those other successes are actually a distraction from what they believe should be our single priority. What these themes reveal is a single narrow frame through which the writers and pundits view the industry itself that leads them to reach these conclusions.

Shaw hints that Microsoft is not going to turn into a company that just works on enterprise and businesses services and that releasing products for consumers will still be a priority, adding that " ... people don’t stop being people when they go to work or stop making things happen when they go home."

Without a doubt, there's been tons of negative comments directed at Ballmer specifically and at Microsoft in general. However, the fact is that Microsoft is still a highly profitable company and it has tens of billions of dollars in the bank they can still use to acquire businesses and/or expand their efforts. All of that came while Ballmer was in charge and indeed, he made decisions that helped make the company's strong financial stance possible. The only difference between Friday and today is that we know that at some point, someone else at Microsoft will have to keep that ball rolling in the right direction.

Source: Microsoft | Image via The Weinstein Company