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5G Got me Fired

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Re: 5G Got me Fired

#51

Post by marcus_holmes »

davidmr wrote: post #23

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite…

Having run a newspaper, I can confirm that advertisers do contact management and say "I didn't like that article, do something about it or we won't be advertising with you again". And the financial pressure is intense. You have many, many staff to pay, and the commercial pressure to keep advertisers happy is real and difficult to manage.

I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story. It happens every day. Luckily I never had to do it, but there were times I was very tempted.

I totally agree with his comment that the only way journalism is going to survive is if readers start paying for it. What we have now is mostly not-journalism.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#52

Post by patrickg_zill »

davidmr wrote: post #23

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite…

Ziff-Davis magazines (original owner of PC Magazine) were never known for editorial integrity, even when they were in print format...

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#53

Post by shams93 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadc…

Its a more insidious form of fake news than foreign intelligence disinfo operations.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#54

Post by brandonmenc »

bunnycorn wrote: post #35

John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong. He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one. Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple. He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued…

> "There is no evidence that people want to use these things."

He was correct - there was no evidence, at the time, that people wanted to use a mouse.

Also, obligatory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#55

Post by newnewpdro »

This was my first encounter with the term "native advertising", and it's a perfect term for describing the bulk of YouTube content. A welcome addition to my vocabulary.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#56

Post by xevb3k »

ghaff wrote: post #42
xevb3k wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That maybe the case, but bad enough to get fired over? That’s not clear to me. The way modern writing works, I would expect he got paid very little for writing this. You’re kind of asked to push out X many blog posts a day, there’s not a huge amount of time for research... or even re-reading/thinking over the implications of your work.

Please let's not just surrender to "That's how modern writing works." I suppose it is at some publications, perhaps including pcmag.com. But there are plenty of thoughtful, researched articles and columns out there to read. That column has maybe a tweet's worth of content.

It’s not how things work everywhere I’m sure. But it seems likely in this case. As such, the content doesn’t surprise me, and I would put the blame solely on the author in this case.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#57

Post by Cpoll »

davidmr wrote: post #23

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite…

A person who's been writing the same type of inflammatory articles for 30 years is suddenly fired, while an article he wrote recently blasting 5G is completely replaced by a new article favorable to 5G... I think you're using Hanlan's Razor to cut in the wrong direction this time.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#58

Post by dwaltrip »

ghaff wrote: post #9

With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles... (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot theory land. That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.

5g affecting health isn't crackpot theory?

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#59

Post by jimjimjim »

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadc…

A good filter for life seems to be 'if you don't want to be manipulated look for the one with a price' or tldr: 'Don't trust free'.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#60

Post by Karunamon »

dwaltrip wrote: post #58
ghaff wrote: post #9

With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles... (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot theory land. That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.

5g affecting health isn't crackpot theory?

Unknown.

There is an impressive-looking group of credentials behind a petition[1] to halt 5G rollouts in the EU until more research can be done. The science just isn't settled yet, partly because doing a rigorous controlled trial in real world conditions is just about impossible.

Keep in mind it's not just about cancer, it's any health effect of any kind. The nature of the shorter wavelengths of 5G means that more transmit power and/or more transmitters to cover the same area will be required, so we can't necessarily take what we know about the current bands and assume these are equally safe. Too many confounding factors.

There's an excellent writeup from Vox on the state of the science. It's a mess, to put it lightly. [2]

[1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17067214/cellphone-cancer-5g-e...

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