This story is fascinating in many ways - he's now over 2 million youtube views and countless radio/television/newspaper appearances.
From hanging around these forums I already have the opinion that airlines and carriers don't treat fragile things well and don't act responsibly when they get damaged.
However, I also work for a big company and I know that there are 2% of your customers that are jerks. They are always the victim of something, the are not reasonable and they have no qualms lying and spreading misinformation to get even with you. In the court of public opinion there is no opportunity to present facts and correct falsehoods.
The world keeps evolving more and more to making decisions based on sound bites,catchprhases and jingles and that's not a good thing.
The other interesting thing is how the media portrays things. I've seen four media accounts of this. Two presented the facts as the musician did, his instrument was damaged, he went through proper channels for months, did not get a reasonable response, started this campaign, when it got a lot of publicity United then offered to settle which he refused. Another said that instead of going through proper channels he decided to write a song. Another said that he was offered compensation but refused and decided to go online with his compaint. These aren't small points because they in fact will lead a reasonable person to support one side or the other depending on which version you hear. I don't think in this case the media is deliberately biased, but they just don't care enough to do proper checking - "we need a story for the 6 O'Clock news, get as much info as you can in the next 30 minutes and we'll go with that".
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