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Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

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Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#71

Post by downerending »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #50
downerending wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but it was my impression that quality journalism was generally the case in the 1980s (in the US at least). What I was reading then certainly seemed to be. Separation of church and state was taken very seriously. These days, you can't start with the assumption that a story is written to J standards. Rather, you need to start with the assumption that it's pushing narrative, and hope to be surprised.

I think you should consider the possibility that the news wasn't necessarily any better just more people had faith in a few sources such as broadcast news and national papers, leading to less contention of the facts.

There definitely was bias then, but it was far more limited (with a few scandalous exceptions). As an example, TV news couldn't strongly push an agenda lest they risk losing their broadcast license. Mixing church and state at the NYT was a great way to get fired.

More personally, I took a J class during this period and wrote for a school newspaper. The instructor talked about J standards the way NRA instructors talk about gun safety--it was practically a religion.

These days, if you want facts, you have to plumb the cesspools of the right and the left and work it out for yourself.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#72

Post by Pharaoh2 »

daenz wrote: post #65
anigbrowl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it was forwarded by email and the leaker's identity and job would be at risk.

Redacting is a long accepted practice when revealing information but preserving secrets.

Its fairly common to embed canary trap into message to find out who the leeker is. Not saying this memo had one, but its generally no longer safe to just show redacted messages without compromising the source.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#73

Post by oh_sigh »

nitrogen wrote: post #67
daenz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redacting is a long accepted practice when revealing information but preserving secrets.

Supposedly so is the practice of using subtle variations in spelling, word choice, word order, spacing, typography, etc. to identify recipients of documents.

This is exactly what I worked on ~10 years ago at amazon, embedding steganographic information into a certain internal app that reported confidential sales numbers. Ended up catching the person who leaked this: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/leaked-sales-data-puts-kin...

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#74

Post by daenz »

nitrogen wrote: post #67
daenz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redacting is a long accepted practice when revealing information but preserving secrets.

Supposedly so is the practice of using subtle variations in spelling, word choice, word order, spacing, typography, etc. to identify recipients of documents.

Are you making an argument for a news agency to never reveal the contents of any leaks, ever? There's always some risk involved, and that's the price of leaking the truth and expecting people to believe you. How can we expect people to "do their research" and be critical of information, when the news agencies themselves won't reveal it, and instead are paraphrasing and interpreting it for us? That's nonsense.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#75

Post by pasabagi »

koheripbal wrote: post #48
DubiousPusher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately this is the low bar set by a lot of modern journalism. We need a way out of it back to neutral, factual reporting. Creating fact focused journalism is a laudible goal but I'd be curious of what specific time in history you think that this was generally the case?

The 1980's had excellent investigative journalism. Journalists these days limit their fact-finding to what tweets they can dig up.

I know that the watergate scandal was in the 70's, but it's generally held to be a landmark of great investigative journalism. A few years ago, it came out that 'deep throat' was actually Mark Felt, a former FBI director with an axe to grind against Nixon. So this great demonstration of the power of a free press turned out to be actually a couple of ambitious journalists serving as the mouthpiece for a three-letter agency, and indeed, the FBI at that time (and Mark Felt especially) were a paradigm of overreach.

Which is kind of a depressing turn on what was once one of the American journalistic epics about the power of truth. Obviously it's hard to generalize, but it does seem to me that this is part of the advantage governments and companies see in a free press - it's a way to launder information, so you can be in every way obviously a rat, but have the voice of a trusted, independent organization.

I don't know if the watergate scandal was characteristic. Certainly, it's an extreme example. But if politicians and statesmen couldn't play journalists, why would they invite them to every occasion? If journalists were investigators in the sense that police are investigators - powerful people would quickly learn to shun them, just as criminals avoid every possible interaction with the police. Seems to me that investigative journalism is, in the final analysis, a way of giving credibility to a process that is at best haphazard and informal, and at worst, simple propaganda.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#76

Post by malandrew »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #50
downerending wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but it was my impression that quality journalism was generally the case in the 1980s (in the US at least). What I was reading then certainly seemed to be. Separation of church and state was taken very seriously. These days, you can't start with the assumption that a story is written to J standards. Rather, you need to start with the assumption that it's pushing narrative, and hope to be surprised.

I think you should consider the possibility that the news wasn't necessarily any better just more people had faith in a few sources such as broadcast news and national papers, leading to less contention of the facts.

Back in the day, news organizations could make money by just presenting the facts first ahead of any other news organization. Just being the first to collect and disseminate information was the key to success. Collecting and disseminating information is now a commodity and the way to be the first in front of someone to make money off add impressions requires virality, and the most clickbait biased content is how you produce profitable content.

Not saying that this problem never existed in the past, but it is far far worse now.

Go watch Walter Cronkite's reporting on the Kennedy assassination. He and his news room is just reporting the facts as they get them with no editorialization or agenda.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#77

Post by malandrew »

inerte wrote: post #19
_2d30 wrote: post #5

I know that that's the title of the article but I read the article and came away mostly thinking nothing was all that bad. Is it because the notes said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart that there is reason to be upset?

Not because they said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart, but because Amazon wants to make this person the face of the movement. They're trying to make the whole movement look dumb by proxy, or that anyone who joined the movement is dumb because they're following a dumb guy. The public PR angle is that only a dumb stupid babbling person would deny the goodness that Amazon does for its employees and try to organize…

How is this any different than the liberal media making Trump the voice of conservatives in the 2016? (which backfired spectacularly and led to his rise and eventual win in the election).

Before liberals downvote me. Conservative media does this too. In fact, journalism these days regardless of political views is riddled with making someone look bad to score cheap points. One of the most toxic more recent developments is taking particularly unflattering still images from high definition video to present someone as dumb, stupid, angry or any of the myriad emotions one might present in the course of existing while filmed.

Making your opponent look bad is sadly par for the course pretty much everywhere these days from politics to corporate PR to social media debates on facebook and twitter. Heck, you see it here on HN too these days. Certainly far more than in the past.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#78

Post by DubiousPusher »

downerending wrote: post #71
DubiousPusher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should consider the possibility that the news wasn't necessarily any better just more people had faith in a few sources such as broadcast news and national papers, leading to less contention of the facts.

There definitely was bias then, but it was far more limited (with a few scandalous exceptions). As an example, TV news couldn't strongly push an agenda lest they risk losing their broadcast license. Mixing church and state at the NYT was a great way to get fired. More personally, I took a J class during this period and wrote for a school newspaper. The instructor talked about J standards the way NRA instructors talk…

You really don't think they teach the same high-minded stuff in journalism classes these days? I would bet you that if you sat in on meetings at the NYT or broadcast news outlets you would hear the exact same kind of intent as you attribute to them in yesteryear.

I could be wrong but I think the far bigger difference from then to today is not the quality of the journalism out of mainstream outlets but that the plethora of outlets available has removed the necessity of consensus myth making. Instead of a collected national myth that Americans share they can now choose their own myth.

They used to have to bend their views somewhat towards the major news because people seek to resolve their cognitive dissonance. Now they can change the channel. As an example, my parents are conservative and when Walter Cronkite criticized the Vietnam War and journalists put direct images of the conflict on TV they praised that. Yet when mainstream news which had generally backed the war in Iraq began to report on things going wrong there my parents were livid. When news outlets began reporting on soldiers dying and reading the names of the dead they were even angrier. Nevermind that the news was unable to air the kinds of direct footage of war they had in the 60s because the military had become much savier about the kinds of situations they let reporters into.

I think major news had almost the exact same, pro establishment, upper middle class ivy league bias it has today. I just think it's easier to confirm a contrary opinion. If Fox News existed in the sixties I think it would've run with slander stories about MLK for example and might've hampered Civil Rights. But they didn't exist and general regard for MLK as a hero became the default myth.

Again, I could be wrong but I think it's a perspective worth putting up against the common narrative.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#79

Post by Der_Einzige »

brnt wrote: post #66

Ah, Amazon. Classy, as always. I'm wasn't counting, but I must be close to a 3 year no-Amazon streak. Who's with me?

What do you expect when the CEO is a literal vampire for the purpose of staying young.

It was fucking horrifying reading up on that practice. It freaks me out to even type out this stuff but it's all true.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#80

Post by lozenge »

notJim wrote: post #26
barryrandall wrote: post #8

This Vice story is just part of the smear campaign. Strategy: “We should spend the first part of our response strongly laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety,” Zapolsky wrote. “Make him the most interesting part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire un…

They call this message discipline. When the press asks you about something, always bring it back to your talking points.

Yep, literally applying the strategy Vice exposed, in the article exposing it.
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