Reporters seek comment. What happens next may surprise you.

It’s a tenet of independent journalism: Always offer the people you’re writing about a chance to provide comment. It’s fundamentally about accuracy.

But what happens if they ignore you? Or post your questions on social media before you’ve written a word? Or decline to comment, then respond to a story with their own version and attack your credibility?

All of that has happened to New York Times reporters. But it hasn’t changed our approach to pursuing the truth.

To better understand why this work matters and how we approach it, I turned to three members of The Times’s Tech team based in California: Pui-Wing Tam, a deputy business editor, and two reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac. They report on extremely fast-changing, lucrative and challenging elements of the business world. And that can mean tense conversations with the people they cover.

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