The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
theatlantic.com
The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
1–10 of 161 posts
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#2Seriously, it sounds like the author of this article is the first journalist who actually read the article in full and reflected on its contents.
Unfortunately, it's a few days too late - the rest already spread wrong summaries, the misinformation has been spread, and the author of the memo fired.
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#3>"Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of more jobs for working-class Americans. In service of that end, he has proposed canceling free-trade agreements, building a wall to keep out immigrants, and eliminating lots of environmental regulations. Critics who avow that they favor more jobs for the working class, but oppose achieving more jobs through those specific means, are not described as “anti-job,” especially when they suggest specific alternatives for job-creation. Even if their alternatives would result in fewer jobs than the Trump administration’s plans, that still wouldn’t make a writeup of their proposal “an anti-job memo.”"
Great point. While reporting on this memo isn't 'fake news', it is an example of reactionary, knee jerk, click bait journalism, which is a pernicious problem that stifles nuanced debate, and is probably doing more damage to our society than literal 'fake news'.
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#4Seriously, it sounds like the author of this article is the first journalist who actually read the article in full and reflected on its contents. Unfortunately, it's a few days too late - the rest already spread wrong summaries, the misinformation has been spread, and the author of the memo fired.
I think you are giving all the click-bait writers far too much of a benefit of doubt. Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that they don't know what they are doing.
They know exactly what they are doing, and what they are doing is creating outrage and profiting from it in this eyeball-click-ad driven journalism economy.
Very few are going to have the wherewithal to forego hundreds or thousands of dollars in ad revenues for the sake of a slightly more gently or fairly worded headline or article. The incentives just do not match up.
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#5> He wants to use different means to address “the problem,” he insists, and doubts that the tradeoffs of getting to a staff of 50 percent men and 50 percent women would be worth it
A lot of people are rushing to give this guy bonus points for saying "I'm not against diversity" and acknowledging some women should exist at Google. (Just as long as they're fewer than men, apparently.)
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#6Regardless on your opinions of the memo, this article nails it right on the head; Gizmodo and other major news outlets handled this very irresponsibly, posting their version that had no citations, and leading the reader, even at the very beginning, into forming the opinion that this was simply a guy being "anti-diversity".
Whatever your thoughts on the subject are, it needs to be pointed out that this type of journalism is absolutely not neutral (even though they will swear up and down that they are) and should be, at the very least, condemned for doing so. This is and will be an increasingly difficult problem, especially when people just read a headline and a summary.
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#7Seriously, it sounds like the author of this article is the first journalist who actually read the article in full and reflected on its contents. Unfortunately, it's a few days too late - the rest already spread wrong summaries, the misinformation has been spread, and the author of the memo fired.
I think you are giving all the click-bait writers far too much of a benefit of doubt. Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that they don't know what they are doing. They know exactly what they are doing, and what they are doing is creating outrage and profiting from it in this eyeball-click-ad driven journalism economy. Very few are going to have the wherewithal to forego hundreds or thousands of dollars i…
Yep, and sadly even major news orgs like CNN are doing this now. Case in point:
"Google CEO cuts vacation short to address controversial memo that argued women aren't biologically fit for tech jobs "
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/894904419766108161
"A Google engineer argued that women aren't biologically fit for tech jobs."
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#8> He wants to use different means to address “the problem,” he insists, and doubts that the tradeoffs of getting to a staff of 50 percent men and 50 percent women would be worth it A lot of people are rushing to give this guy bonus points for saying "I'm not against diversity" and acknowledging some women should exist at Google. (Just as long as they're fewer than men, apparently.)
That's not apparent. Unless you subscribe to the wrong-headed notion mentioned in this article as well.
> the tradeoffs of getting to a staff of 50 percent men and 50 percent women would be worth it (a position implicitly shared by every company that doesn’t have gender parity in its workforce)
If I have 1 employee and I'm a woman, it has to be a man. Otherwise I am implicitly sharing some viewpoint about diversity. Nonsense.
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#9> to help him avoid alienating his audience,
The gender-diversity topic is too charged to accomplish that. Seriously, I would challenge essayists from either side of the debate to write any significant words on the subject that does not "alienate the audience".
Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
#10> He wants to use different means to address “the problem,” he insists, and doubts that the tradeoffs of getting to a staff of 50 percent men and 50 percent women would be worth it A lot of people are rushing to give this guy bonus points for saying "I'm not against diversity" and acknowledging some women should exist at Google. (Just as long as they're fewer than men, apparently.)
There are at least 3 other HN threads where people are deliberately misrepresenting what he wrote and implying malicious intent where none existed.
Can we at least keep this one for substantive meta-commentary?