Am I the only person who has a problem with this headline, "Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing" am I overreacting here or others feel the same?
For me at the face of it's not incorrect, but it feels to me a certain deliberate wordsmithing is used to create a sense of growing momentum.
What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. I do understand FB will not provide that info, but some real journalism and follow up from said companies could have gathered us the amount this boycott means. After all this suppose to be NYT.
They do touch on this number, "smaller businesses that make up the bulk of its eight million advertisers have been considering their options"
However, again they are carefully crafting their words in a way that it's not inaccurate but showing a larger problem.
Instead of saying "one agency that manages 20 clients", or "we have heard from some advertisers" using "one agency", or "some advertisers" they are saying "advertisers" which to some readers will read as a lot of advertisers or a universal movement among advertisers.
What’s more, the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. I’m a bit skeptical of anything they publish these days about Facebook, Google, and other companies that could potentially threaten their access to clicks, just given their financial incentives to weaken these companies as much as possible.
My thoughts exactly, they have a clear conflict of interest when covering this story. Although, to be honest, all of mainstream journalism seems way more biased and blatantly slanted than I recall from 20-30 years ago. Perhaps I am just better at noticing it now?
You are not just better at noticing it. It really is more slanted.
Journalism 20-30 years ago was mostly funded on a subscription model. In this model they work hard to maintain their reputation, so that people will trust them as an accurate source of news.
Journalism today is mostly funded per click. Which means that the most important thing is a headline that grabs people's attention and causes them to click. The incentive is for the most outrageous and attention grabbing headline possible. With no incentive for being accurate - by the time you realize that the article is junk they've been paid and are looking for another sucker.
If you're interested in a book length exposition of how this change in dynamics has changed the news landscape, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... The trends that it discusses have played out for another decade since it was written, but played out along the direction that it described.
They do, and they therefore have an incentive to do better than other news organizations. But the general media landscape has become more biased and less reliable. Furthermore the fact that the public expects news to be delivered more quickly means that they have less room than they used to to hold a story for fact checking.
The result is that the NYT today is better than CNN is today, but they do not meet the same standard that they did 25 years ago. In fact they might not be better today than CNN was 25 years ago.
But I think the problem is that a lot of news publications have slowly become more and more biased, and they have cultivated specific audiences. Maybe because of the biases of their journalists, maybe because they are trying to cater to the outspoken, who might only be a small minority, maybe for some other reason. Thus the subscription model starts to fall apart when the people who want to support it shrinks, so you still might be engaged in clickbait and ragebait to try and grab people and bring them in to subscribe, or keep the people that like the type of clickbait and ragebait they publish. Unfortunately, you are likely getting more and more of one specific group.
I think this is a losing proposition because as you target a smaller and smaller part of the population, if you step out of line by publishing something that is against their world view, they will unsubscribe and take their money elsewhere. Look at what happened with the Tom Cotton oped in the NYT. The editor that approved that quit because of the outrage, and I wonder how many subscriptions they lost. If you think that oped was horrible, then why not post a rebuttal? Why is the mere act of publishing the opinion of a senator such a crime? I think this shows that the subscription model is not protecting against the degradation of the NYT in quality. If you had a wider user base, and appeal to a wide range of people, you could lose some subscriptions when putting out some controversial article, but it wouldn't cripple you.
Good to see more people calling out the sensationalism and manipulation tactics that publishers deploy...not just the Times either.
I've gotten to a point where if my spidey sense is tingling, I won't even click on link or read the content, the time to reward that behavior has passed.
And not only is that strong business interest, its also mixed with strong political agenda that's pushed on Facebook despite recent pointers* that FB internally moderates in favour of Democrats already.
That's kind of a skepticism conundrum. If media can't be trusted about media...
I mean, I agree with you. They're vested. Even if it wasn't financial, journalists must have an insider's set of opinions about good & evil in the media industry.
Yeah, it is a bit of a conundrum, but I don't think I'd say they can't be trusted entirely. I mean, I doubt they're printing outright lies - unlike some media outlets. I think the bias would creep in more in the fact that they run this story at all (while potentially interesting, it's hardly world-changing news), and also in descriptive words used here and there. As long as one is aware of their inherent motivations I think it's possible to get worthwhile info from their stories on their competitors. Of course, who knows what stories about media they're choosing not to cover.
For one thing, Facebook competes with the NYT for advertising dollars. If Facebook and Instagram are less appealing places to run adds for a company then maybe that company will spend more of its advertising budget on NYT ads instead.
More broadly though, they have an incentive to weaken companies like Facebook and Google, which are effectively gatekeepers for a lot of traffic to NYT articles. Clicking on an article shared on Facebook, or clicking through to an article in a Google search result are very common ways for people to land on the NYT website. Not only is this traffic valuable to the NYT for ad revenue it's also very valuable for selling subscriptions - people are more likely to subscribe if they have been seeing and reading free articles. I think it's safe to assume the people running the NYT are aware of this dependency on search and social media platforms and are eager to do anything they can to minimize it. I have no idea how much bias, if any, actually creeps into reporting - hopefully it's none! But the business incentives are enough to make me approach any article from almost any media company about Google or FB with a dose of healthy skepticism.
Do you prefer "Ad Boycott of Facebook Kind of Growing"?
Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook Growing Slowly"?
Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook: The Details"
It is growing, the details are accurate in the article, and I can't think of a headline that has zero editorial information in it. If they don't run any story, then they risk the opposite criticism: why didn't you tell us?!
You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality.
I worry more about media that tries to create a reality that fits their ideology. A bunch of companies whose brand identity is tied closely with politics jump ship and NYT tries to paint that into a movement. Pardon me when I’m skeptical, especially when these companies are comparably tiny and when Facebook’s only crime is daring to defend free speech on its own platform.
Give it a year or so and companies like Patagonia will quietly come back to FB.
Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content?
"You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality. "
And...there is no such thing as objectivity in media, never was or will be. The act of deciding what stories to publish or not is a subjective decision in and of itself.
Yes, humans are biased. Sigh/Yawn. Still, there is a world of difference between trying to be objective and not trying to be objective at all. I think, generally, the Times is trying a lot more than most organizations and I respect that. Just because humans are biased doesn't mean all journalism is equally biased.
And yes, story selection is editorializing. Sigh/Yawn. I think choosing to run this story is a legitimate editorial decision as I believe enough people care about it -- in fact, I care about it.
I think there's only a case of bad journalism here if you catch the Time in a misrepresentation. The existence of the story is not, in itself, a misrepresentation.
Cool. I care about to also, though were this story published elsewhere never would I think 'gee why didn't the Times cover this?' Or the Journal, or the Chronicle, etc. - guess I am privileged enough to have bigger concerns.
> Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content?
I would. Because this "news" will eventually get out, and I would wonder why it was not covered by the MSM. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stories about things not being covered in the MSM, so yes, people will wonder why there was no news coverage about a boycott, instigated by prominent civil rights groups like the Anti Defamation League, the NAACP, and supported by well known companies like Patagonia, REI et al against a well known company and platform like Facebook.
What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue.
Does it matter?
If two advertisers quit on Monday, and four more quit on Tuesday, and six more quit on Wednesday, that is growing momentum.
Is there a codified percentage of revenue where a newspaper is suddenly allowed (by Facebook?) to write about things? Can you provide a link?
HN-types like to jump on the mass media for not noticing trends soon enough. Then they jump on the mass media for noticing trends too soon. Make up your hive mind.
The article isn’t analyzing net advertisers, it doesn’t matter if 10 new ones join that’s not relevant to the statement that the number leaving is increasing.
I think we've realized there is no such thing as a mostly neutral, reputable news source. What you choose to report on, what you choose to ignore, and what language you use to frame that information are editorial choices and they cannot be totally free from bias.
Most people, including people on HN, don't grok that there's a difference between news and editorials. Especially with everything getting mashed together in endless digital news scrolling apps.
2020: If it's something they agree with, it's news. If there's something they disagree with, it's propaganda.
It's not entirely new, though. When I worked in television news years ago, the average person didn't know the difference between the news and the entertainment programs. I was introduced to this one day standing in the supermarket checkout line and two women were talking about something they saw "on the news." They were talking about the Maury Povich Show.
What I have observed is that NYT's coverage slants heavily towards supporting immigration, both legal and illegal. For illegal immigration, they run stories which tend to evoke maximum sympathy (DACA, impact on women / young kids / old people etc). Even for a story involving all sorts of people, they will use photos or anecdotes which will evoke stronger sympathies (example: [1]).
Also take a look at the kind of opinion columns they run - you will easily find someone supporting illegal immigration or asylum every few months. But you will rarely see them printing opinions from the other side of this debate, i.e. people opposing illegal immigration.
And this is an obvious slant on a topic where Americans are evenly divided, if not leaning more against illegal immigration [2].
That appears to be confirmation bias - the NYT also put out sympathetic articles on anti-immigration people of the "a day in the life of a friendly neighborhood racist" type.
I'm not sure how to assess or interpret what you're saying. What does it mean to "support immigration"?
I'm pretty sure you're not literally suggesting that absolutely zero people be allowed to move to the U.S.
It'd be helpful if you could explain what "supporting immigration" means to you in this context.
Otherwise it's all too easy for people to make their own (usually negative, often untrue) assumptions.
For the record, I'll say that I don't think folks illegally crossing the border should be treated the way they've been - especially with regards to the inhumane and immoral, and probably illegal camps that both adults and children were (are?) put in.
Obviously that's only one part of a much broader conversation, and, I want to give you the opportunity to explain what you mean, and not jump to conclusions.
Lastly, my own belief is "the view from nowhere" is impossible. We're all biased, consciously or otherwise, and I believe it's valuable to aspire to a self-awareness of that bias as I think "removing it" is a logical impossibility.
What I think is important for news organizations which aspire to trustworthiness to do, is, provide transparency, accountability, fact-checking, and overall thoughtfulness. Obviously some of these things are not easily quantifiable.
But, the humanities have centuries of experience in assessing and analyzing texts written by people. Philosophy is an example of one humanistic field which has its own procedures for analyzing more "qualitative" works, for example.
I'm a big fan of valuing expertise. Just as you'd want an experienced software developer making decisions about application development, I think it's valuable to turn to experts in written discourse - humanists of all stripes, the oft-maligned liberal arts - for direction in how to analyze texts.
Basically what I'm saying is if we're going to do this, let's do this for real ;). Otherwise, it's not reasoned, informed discussion/debate/analysis - it's just a reactive sharing of beliefs.
While the NYT has always had its share of bias claims, since Trump's election it appears that even the facade of balanced reporting is taking a back seat to their editorial agenda.
You have editorialized headlines[1] that incorporate common liberal phrases to invoke outrage. Other "How to Raise an Anti-Racist Kid"
Any story that mentions Trump will have a negative headline, even mundane stories about disaster declarations and normal government business.
The line between editorial and news content has grown increasingly blurry: scrolling through their app you'll need a second look to determine whether a storing is news or opinion - they're mixed together, often without delineation. For example in the app today you'll find an opinion piece calling for slavery reparations sandwiched between an analysis on Trump's reelection campaign and a story about a problem police officer.
As a long-time subscriber (and no fan of Trump), it's both frustrating and worrying to see the "paper of record" of my country begin to parrot leftist talking points in their daily reporting.
So, actually, I think it's interesting to examine the above headline empirically.
1. I think we all here agree that "anti-racist" is a good thing to be. Even if we're annoyed w/how the term itself may be used sometimes for effect.
2. The United States has an extremely well-researched and well-documented history of deep, systemic racism, which persists to this day. Redlining in Chicago is one example of less-obvious or less-known ways in which racism has been baked into the system.
3. Item 2) is also reflected in U.S. media and culture. It's getting better but mass media/culture industry portrayals of people of color (especially black men) are extremely problematic. I'd like to emphasize none of this is entirely unique to the U.S., but, the U.S. is the focus of our discussion right now.
4. I'm pretty sure research in social science and psychology proves (even taking into account all of the replication issues found w/studies in these fields, and in medicine, over the last several years) that we all are strongly and unconsciously affected by our environment, especially in our formative years.
4. Therefore all of us who grew up in the U.S. - including people of color - unless we were incredibly lucky w/regards to our family and community in our youth - have internalized racist outlooks and beliefs to one degree or another.
I think this is an extremely important point. Anyway ...
5. Therefore it makes perfect sense that, once we acknowledge the empirical truths of points 1-4, that people would be interested in raising anti-racist kids.
Sure, it's of-the-moment and eye-catching. On a deeper level, it's super-relevant to our current moment, and something important for people of conscience to think about.
Whether the article is any good or not, I have no idea and it's not relevant to this discussion ;)
So I don't think that particular phrase is a good example of an unhealthy bias for a news organization to have.
BTW I too have issues and concerns around politicized language at times. More so an irk or knee-jerk reaction that it serves more to virtue-signal than do good.
That said, I've been trying to examine my thoughts and feelings around politicized language (in this case what you're calling "leftist language") more analytically.
In part I think the immediacy of my reaction is itself an interesting signal. I wonder if that's true for you too, but of course I have no idea - just projecting here.
It's not even leftist. The NYT confuses reality with semi-classical liberalism. Trump is allowed to push their buttons (and, their readers') in the news articles. But they haven't grappled with the illiberalism of the average American, nor is there editorializing really for anything. It's purely reactionary.
There was a John Stuart interview recently where I was pleasently surprised he got this. NYT now calls lies lies, but they get so titillated from this departure from both-siderism they forgot they
a) Most people are used to being lied and gaslighted by authority constantly and no longer have that emotional reaction
b) the emotional reaction to lieing caused them to stop their analysis from going deeper, so we miss out on a complete picture of the reality vs the message
c) the emoting is the exact biases tone the both-siderism was supposed to prevent. The calling a lie a lie bit was something we all wanted because it wasn't actually in conflict with objective reporting.
Basically, they sound like they are miming the intercept's voice without the coherent ideology that makes reading the Intercept worth it.
Ben & Jerry's spent less than $5k on Facebook and Instagram ads last month. They'll get more publicity value from joining the boycott vs. paying to run ads for a month or two.
Keep in mind, the author of the article is usually not the same person that writes the headline. An editor was looking for a punchy title for the piece.
I don't know the best way to put this, but for me the anectodal evidence i've seen, consisting mainly of tech articles and Elon Musk tweets, seems to point in this direction. Albeit facebook's data might probably show that their ad use is growing despite these setbacks.
In my opinion this all stems what I think is a lack of "emotional intelligence" on the part of facebook's CEO. They clearly don't have the ability to judge correctly how people will feel about many of their decisions, nor do they seem to have any remorse from damages they cause ( i.e. how facebook was used during the genocide in Burma)
They have a superb ability to predict changes at scale on the technical side and I think their role in the company should be restricted to this.
For me at the face of it's not incorrect, but it feels to me a certain deliberate wordsmithing is used to create a sense of growing momentum.
What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. I do understand FB will not provide that info, but some real journalism and follow up from said companies could have gathered us the amount this boycott means. After all this suppose to be NYT.
They do touch on this number, "smaller businesses that make up the bulk of its eight million advertisers have been considering their options"
However, again they are carefully crafting their words in a way that it's not inaccurate but showing a larger problem.
Instead of saying "one agency that manages 20 clients", or "we have heard from some advertisers" using "one agency", or "some advertisers" they are saying "advertisers" which to some readers will read as a lot of advertisers or a universal movement among advertisers.