Public image of a company, and in a situation such as GW's where they have a reputation of being the big bag meanie that doesn't care about it's fans and is solely motivated by the almighty dollar, one would think they could be more pro-active in protecting the image of the company than being silent until forced into responding to allegations (if they even bother to do that)
Pretty much what I was getting at, though you state it much better as I had neglected to mention that the communicantion needed to be a 2-way street.