Samsung threatened to strand two Indian bloggers in Berlin?

Update: Samsung has made a statement, but have not addressed the issue of threatening to leave behind two Indian bloggers. The statement is as follows: (Context of the story is below) Samsung Mob!lers is a voluntary community of active Samsung mobile device users, who are offered the opportunity to participate in our marketing events across the world. At these events, all activities they undertake are on a voluntary basis. No activities are forced upon them. We regret there was a misunderstanding between the Samsung Mob!lers coordinators and the relevant blogger, as we understand he was not sufficiently briefed on the nature of Samsung Mob!lers’ activities at IFA 2012. We have been attempting to get in touch with him. We respect the independence of bloggers to publish their own stories. It’s a shocking tale of bullying, and if proven to be true could leave Samsung with very few sympathisers. According to this extremely detailed story in The Next Web, Samsung flew down two Indian bloggers to be a part of consumer electronics show IFA in Berlin, and then threatened to leave them there unless they agreed to actively promote Samsung products. According to The Next Web which has been in touch with one of the bloggers (identified as Clinton Jeff),  the two bloggers had been offered the chance to cover IFA, but had categorically told Samsung that they wanted to cover the event as reporters, and not as part of a promotional team for the South Korean company. Despite this however, the two had got to Berlin and found that the company expected them to wear Samsung T-shirts and promote products at a booth. [caption id=“attachment_441606” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AP[/caption] The two bloggers had refused to promote the products and had been promptly been told that they could then find their own way home, because Samsung would cancel the tickets it booked for them. At the time of writing it has been reported that Nokia has come to the rescue of the bloggers, who have offered to foot the price of their tickets back home, as well as their hotel stay. Samsung has not responded to The Next Web post as yet, and it is still a little hard to believe that the two bloggers had absolutely NO idea that they would be expected to do promotional events for Samsung, in return for being taken to IFA. This is, in fact taken up in a follow up post by the Post noon website, which quotes another Indian blogger, Amit Bhawani who also attended the event, as saying Samsung were straight forward about their expectations. If this was the case, as distasteful as the task may have been, Clinton Jeff was in the wrong. Of course, Samsung’s method of dealing with the issue - aka threatening to strand the bloggers in another country half way across the world - is highly debatable. However the documents posted in the story look authentic enough, and it will be interesting to see what Samsung’s side of the story is. Is this a case of corporate bullying or the grey lines of sponsored content? Either way it is certainly going to see intense debate and repercussions across online communities in a digital media landscape that is still navigating monetising content on the web. We will keep tracking this story, so watch this space.