The problem with asking a large state agency or a big company for a random working-class employee to interview following a big negative story is that they’ll usually find the one who’s going to give the best face for the entity they work for. That at least seems to be the case with Correctional Officer Wilma Linn in the KING-5 story first headlined “Female corrections officer feels safe despite murder” but later changed to “Female corrections officer manages inmates with only handcuffs, radio.”Drew Mikkelsen, a KING-5 reporter, tells Seattle Weekly that the station put a request in with the state Department of Corrections to speak with a corrections officer, any corrections officer, in the wake of an assault on a female therapist and the strangling death of Officer Jayme Biendl, who was killed by convicted murderer and rapist Byron Scherf while she was patrolling the prison’s chapel alone.Sure enough, the DOC came up with Linn, who tells the network she’s never afraid to come to work, even though her colleague had just been killed there.”Fear the inmates? No. I just don’t go around thinking about that constantly,” said Linn. “I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I did.”Mikkelsen says he doesn’t think Linn was coached before the interview, and chances are she wasn’t. But to think that the DOC, when given the chance, would pick any officer except one they knew would have such positive things to say is highly unlikely.In fairness, Linn apparently does say (though not on camera) that she thinks Biendl shouldn’t have been working alone all day on the day she was killed. But that’s practically common knowledge among prison employees interviewed after the murder, and certainly won’t ruffle any feathers with her superiors that haven’t already been ruffled.To be sure, this is no criticism against Linn. She may very well feel safe, secure, and think everything is swell at the prison. But when an agency in the hot seat gets to handpick its “random employees” for interviews about working conditions and a news network eats it up with no questions asked, one has to take the news with several grains of salt. Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.