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Why is it we believe these companies statements?

Is the PR of fortune 500 companies bound to tell the truth always?

I'm a capitalist, but I cannot deny that it is in the best interest of companies to hide and deny negative news.

It's not in their interest to issue a strong denial if they know the story is going to be confirmed later. It just makes them look worse than if they'd issued some generic language about how much they care about security. So either they genuinely believe the story is false, or they believe it's impossible to prove, and given the scope of the story I'm not sure there's a difference.

Lying to the shareholders is criminal (maybe civil offense, IANAL) if you're a public company.

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