Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#171

Post by dlp211 » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #156

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; the…

This is why the business side and news side of (quality) news papers have been historically kept separate. It also leads to perceived "weirdness" to readers when they see a paper taking money from a corporation to run an advertisement alongside an article critical of said corporation.

This isn't to invalidate your point completely, but to give some insight to those who are not aware of how this conflict of interest has been generally handled.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#172

Post by _rpd » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #163

It is worth remembering the Australia fiasco. The Australian media led by Murdoch basically shook down Facebook until they came to am agreement to give the media kickbacks. Then Australia agreed not to apply its law. The European media has also demanded payments, even though the value flows from sending traffic to news sites and not the other way around. The media seems to believe it is entitled to be send traffic AN…

> the social media giant has been funneling money to America’s biggest news organizations—and hanging the rest of the press out to dry.

The complaint here doesn't seem to be that Facebook is handing out money, but rather that not everyone is getting a cut.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#173

Post by abraxas » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

Well, the robber barons of the 19th century used to buy up the local press. The 21st century ones are going planet scale.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#174

Post by mola » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

You can't know what they didn't publish. So how can you know there's no influence? How do you know the NYT doesn't use theis bad coverage as leverage in some negotiations? Your attitude is very naive.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#175

Post by tome » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

phpnode wrote: post #122

tome wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tome's law strikes again! "In any discussion about an article whose title is a question, Betteridge's law is mentioned with probability 1." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24545238

I'm so sorry tome, but this is actually the Fourth Law of Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722251 This predates tome's law by 3 years.

Very interesting!

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#176

Post by Spivak » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #168

So, Facebook is allowed to not only determine what is 'true' and 'untrue', on their platform, thereby giving certain news agencies essential monopolies on their platform and they're giving money to these organizations. Explain to me how Facebook is not considered a publisher again?

I mean I’m not a music publisher if I buy the rights to play some artist’s music in my store or whatever.

Sure you could say FB is republishing a work which would imply some level of endorsement but paying for use on behalf of their users seems totally different.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#177

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #66

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.

I kinda disagree with the idea tech blogs aren't real journalism or shouldn't be held to the same journalism standards. Especially with revenue on print media declining as much as it has, I'd say smaller blogs tend to do a lot of the deep original research online that many news organizations would've traditionally done. A blog like The Verge is often the original source of major revelations about tech companies and their behaviors.

Furthermore, while one might consider tech blogs a niche area, we consider Amazon, the world's largest retailer, a "tech company", so as "tech companies" start dominating major traditional verticals, "tech news" starts to just... be "news".

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#178

Post by TomMckenny » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

> so far it seems like "no", or "not yet"

On the contrary, it does indeed and has been known to do so for many decades [0,1]

Indeed, in Citizens United, SCOTUS in the concurring opinion claimed the founders intent in the 1st amendment was to allow monied interests to own and influence media for political purposes.

The question is not whether distortion exists but how prevalent it is.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_pr...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#179

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

Private mainstream media in Canada takes a lot of direct subsidy money from government as well (famously, $600m a few years ago), and it's to the point where it's debatable whether news outlets are real businesses producing something people need or desire, or they're just a policy objective.

A real news business, one that publishes non-fiction content about current events that people want to read in exchange for subscriptions and advertiser dollars, is probably too fringe to be considered News at this point, because what most people really want is not what is officially approved as good for them. It's not official news unless it supports an establishment narrative, and somehow journalists and editors have come to believe they have official credentials unrelated to the truth and quality of their work that are deserving of some kind of recognition, and even deference.

I don't even see this question of whether the NYTimes and other publishers might be compromised by FB money and others as a point of contention. It's like everyone already knows, but they're wrestling with whether they can tell people themselves.

> As Doug Reynolds, the managing partner for the West Virginia newspapers suing Facebook and Google for damages, told me, “If the future of this industry is that we’re dependent on their goodwill, then we don’t have an independent press anymore.”

Indeed.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#180

Post by ipaddr » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #139

ipaddr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT provides national coverage. By only accepting and showing regional or local ads this problem can be avoided.

National stories are also often regional and local stories. I just pulled up the NYT website. The top story is the Derek Chauvin trial which is certainly also a local story in Minneapolis. The second from the top Opinion piece is about the NYC mayoral race. Does that mean that NYT shouldn't be able to accept any advertising dollars from those markets?

What is great about the regional model is the large number of regions which removes the need to not accept from a regiin. In your example Minneapolis is one of many cities the pressure local ad dollars never makes it's way to the editorial board.