I don't know what to call it and it may or may not be interesting to you but it crosses many lines of thought as so many things take a beating in these two pieces of information.
Interesting? Yes. Though I have heard a few bad reports about Gibson in recent years. I know a few guitarists who love Gibson's sound, but won't buy Gibson new or used for the reasons mentioned in the article. One even burned his Gibson in a bonfire, That's a bit extreme IMO. Of course, if we all knew what goes on within the walls of most companies we do business with and boycotted the bad ones, we'd all be n@ked and starving while not being entertained in any way at all.
It's too bad ecoustics doesn't have a musical instrument/musician section. It'd be nice to read discussions on that topic.
I've heard concerning things before about Gibson, not as much about Fender. These types of shenanigans are not unique to Gibson of course, or instrument makers. Sadly, the very principles some of these companies were founded on, and which brought them sucess, have been long since disgarded and replaced with purely sales and marketing priorities (and budgets). It's no longer about the product, the quality, or the Customer.
Happily there are still companies that have the right values, or at least values that I think are important. I don't know who the CEO is at Gibson, but in my experience, poor leadership is where many companies go off the rails.