New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism • Hacker News Board

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#141

Post by leereeves » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:48 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #124

leereeves wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the neutral statements that were deleted: “It became clear that the board and I had a different view on the ability of Reddit to grow this year,” Ms. Pao said in an interview. “Because of that, it made sense to bring someone in that shared the same view.” Sam Altman, a member of Reddit’s board, said he personally appreciated Ms. Pao’s efforts during her two years working at the start-up. “Ellen has done a ph…

* Contra your argument, the piece retains Pao's claim that she left because of differences on the direction of the company. * The Altman quote that was removed favors Pao's supporters. Removing it makes her plight less sympathetic. * Contra your argument, the petition not only remains in the final story, but has its own graf. * Contra your argument, the piece retains the concern about Victoria's firing. * The relocat…

You're right about the petition. Mea culpa; it was just moved.

What's your source re the salary negotiation policy? Numerous news stories said it was Pao's decision.

The move to SF was often brought up again in discussions over the past couple weeks. Contra the misogyny argument, there's anger at reddit that pre-dates Pao.

Regarding the Altman quote and Pao's statement that "it made sense to bring someone in that shared the same view", I can see your interpretation, though I disagree.

Regarding Victoria's firing: yes, the NYT mentioned it, but without explaining why it angered the mods so much.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#142

Post by yzzxy » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #63

yzzxy wrote: post #62

NOTE: Techraptor is a site set up by Gamergaters to talk about games and tech news without reprecussions from people who find their views exclusive of progressives, minorities, feminists, and LGBTQ folks. They call this "ethical journalism" because they claim to not receive kickbacks or have special relationships with their journalistic subjects, as they perceive their ideological enemies do. The quality of journalis…

You might want to familiarize youself with the flaws in making an ad hominem argument.

This isn't ad hominem, it's directly related to the topic at hand (ethics, motivations in journalism). Ad hominem doesn't mean the mistakes of the past can't be mentioned, it means that character flaws can't.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#143

Post by scrollaway » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

yzzxy wrote: post #62

NOTE: Techraptor is a site set up by Gamergaters to talk about games and tech news without reprecussions from people who find their views exclusive of progressives, minorities, feminists, and LGBTQ folks. They call this "ethical journalism" because they claim to not receive kickbacks or have special relationships with their journalistic subjects, as they perceive their ideological enemies do. The quality of journalis…

What I'm seeing is a news piece citing sources I can independently verify.

This is really damning: http://newsdiffs.org/diff/934341/934454/www.nytimes.com/2015...

Did "gamergaters" (whatever that means...) set up newsdiffs too? Oh wait, googling it brings me to a git repository created in 2012, years before "gamergate" was a word on the internet.

So, I click that link, and I see exactly what the article talks about. A neutral piece on a CEO stepping down completely rewritten to push for a "look at how they're mistreating that poor female CEO" agenda. A solid article, turned into opinion mediatrash.

And you're making an ad hominem argument about the website because of who created it.

Quick sidenote (and if this gets me downvoted, have the decency to reply; blind downvotes with no discussion breed censorship)... As someone who is pro- women in tech, pro- women in general, pro- minorities, and even as an activist at times, I am finding it really fucking hard these days to be pro feminism when the agenda consists of lying to people to get into the spotlight.

I can't ever support a cause where this crap happens all the time. Where the facts aren't good enough to push the agenda.

Are there really not enough stories of opressed women that you have to find Ellen Pao, a CEO (which already almost nobody can relate to) in the middle of extremely controversial fraudulent lawsuits, that is accused of being out of touch with its own userbase? And people try to make readers relate to her?

There's so much shit to be outraged at in the world. Why fabricate?

Edit: Yep. Downvoted without discussion. Brilliant. We're really encouraging debates here...

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#144

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #134

tptacek wrote: post #72

I'm not clear why I'm supposed to be alarmed by this. The update neither changes nor removes any of the substantive material from the original story (look carefully). It adds additional material, and fleshes some of the previous material out. It seems like standard practice at newspapers to get a first take on a story and then flesh it out later. It's certainly standard practice at The New York Times, as even a casua…

It's not an opinion piece, it's a biased piece. Let's compare the headlines and ledes, which set the tone of a piece (some might argue they're all that matter). Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief 1. Ellen Pao, the interim chief executive of Reddit, resigned from the online message board on Friday after a week of ceaseless criticism from scores of angry users over the handling of an employee departure. This…

I think we mostly agree. I'm willing to concede that the piece is "biased" --- I don't know if it is, because I think misogyny is in fact the most important attribute of the Pao story, but that alone forces me to accept that reasonable people could believe the piece wasn't perfectly balanced.

So when you say:

I'm not saying that anything in the article is false. Nor do I think it's an opinion piece – it absolutely falls on the "objective news" side of the spectrum. It could even be perfectly cromulent as a standalone article — just not as the lead story on the reddit drama.

I think that leaves us in a place without much interesting debate. You think the lede of the latest piece is "spin"; I think it's pretty self-evidently the right lede for the piece.

But this is a very far cry from the debate "TechRaptor" and this thread are suggesting we have!

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#145

Post by TorKlingberg » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

nbouscal wrote: post #125

mingus68040 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insofar as they went along with the overall thrust of the "blackout", yes; that is support of a mysoginist agenda. However /r/science tried to sit on the fence by claiming they had to make their subreddit private due to its frequent collaboration with /r/IAma -- a reason which was nonsensical. None of this began until Reddit's administration indicated its intention to begin banning certain subreddits. The mindless cu…

How about an older white male, from a business background, who was openly trying to institute censorship and monetization and was unabashedly ignorant of Reddit culture? I'm fairly confident that a CEO like that would have been significantly more hated by Redditors. The issue wasn't race or gender, it was culture .

The hate for Ellen Pao on Reddit seemed to start with her gender discrimination lawsuit. Also what monetization?

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#146

Post by egocodedinsol » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #106

exstudent2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be concerned because: 1. the rewrites weren't noted in the article, thus undermining the authoritativeness of ALL NYT pieces. 2. They added a bunch of opinion to what was a fairly neutral piece.

Again: it is not standard practice at the NYT to note rewrites between quick takes and final versions. If you spend even a few minutes on NewsDiffs.org, you're going to see that this happens all the time. This is important because the "TechRaptor" story doesn't concern itself with the NYT's standard practice --- in fact, it doesn't even seem to be aware of the practice. Instead, it takes a commonplace and uses it as…

> it is not standard practice at the NYT to note rewrites between quick takes and final versions. ... they should acknowledge that it happens constantly.

I thought this was the point of the article?

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#147

Post by declan » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

I worked as a journalist for over a decade -- CBS, Time, CNET, Wired, etc. -- before founding https://recent.io/ and every news organization I can think of updates articles after publication.

This practice predates the Internet by decades; wire services called updates "writethrus." Updated copy would be labeled internally for editors as 2nd-lede writethru, 3rd-lede writethru, with perhaps some details about what was changed or added, with those internal notes typically not being published for readers. So east coast papers would print a different version of the story than later-deadline west coast papers. The Washington Post did this in print form, with stories in the early "bulldog" edition often modified and expanded before appearing in the final edition. News has always been a snapshot in time.

There is significant pressure on reporters to post news quickly to capitalize on social sharing and search -- even if the quick first post is one or two paragraphs with little review by editors -- and update their articles quickly. This was the official policy in at least one newsroom where I worked. That can and does lead to inaccuracies and hasty reporting, though errors do tend to be corrected quickly. But the linked article does not accuse the NYT of factual errors.

It is true that it would be near-trivial for news organizations to have a history tab appear on each article that shows older versions -- I've suggested this and other features before, like providing people quoted in the article an automatic right of reply in a text field underneath the story. The reason we don't see history tabs is probably a combination of legal risk (imagine that a green reporter writes that John Doe was convicted of murder, and John Doe was the prosecutor, not the defendant), little demand from readers, embarrassment about errors in early versions, and newspaper-era newsroom thinking.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#148

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #141

tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Contra your argument, the piece retains Pao's claim that she left because of differences on the direction of the company. * The Altman quote that was removed favors Pao's supporters. Removing it makes her plight less sympathetic. * Contra your argument, the petition not only remains in the final story, but has its own graf. * Contra your argument, the piece retains the concern about Victoria's firing. * The relocat…

You're right about the petition. Mea culpa; it was just moved. What's your source re the salary negotiation policy? Numerous news stories said it was Pao's decision. The move to SF was often brought up again in discussions over the past couple weeks. Contra the misogyny argument, there's anger at reddit that pre-dates Pao. Regarding the Altman quote and Pao's statement that "it made sense to bring someone in that sha…

Here is the entire Victoria graf:

Ms. Pao’s departure from Reddit was prompted after the online message board’s tight-knit community broke into upheaval when news broke that Victoria Taylor, a prominent and well-liked Reddit employee, had been suddenly dismissed from the company this month with no public explanation. In protest, Reddit users shut down hundreds of sections of the message board.

This graf:

* Establishes an objective cause of Pao's ouster --- the firing of Victoria Taylor --- that Pao's opponents widely agree is the reason she left.

* Calls into question the reason for Taylor's firing.

* Reports the subreddit strike, which was done precisely to get this sort of attention.

At no point does the graf downplay the firing or somehow mitigate Pao's involvement in it. Which it easily could have, because Pao didn't fire Taylor, Ohanian did.

I do not think you can win an argument that the Times tried to spin the Victoria Taylor issue out of the article.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#149

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

egocodedinsol wrote: post #146

tptacek wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again: it is not standard practice at the NYT to note rewrites between quick takes and final versions. If you spend even a few minutes on NewsDiffs.org, you're going to see that this happens all the time. This is important because the "TechRaptor" story doesn't concern itself with the NYT's standard practice --- in fact, it doesn't even seem to be aware of the practice. Instead, it takes a commonplace and uses it as…

> it is not standard practice at the NYT to note rewrites between quick takes and final versions. ... they should acknowledge that it happens constantly. I thought this was the point of the article?

No, it is not. The article's claim is more specific. In essence, what it says is that the Times does not provide a "git blame" for all their articles, and for that reason, it is bad at covering technology.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#150

Post by leereeves » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #138

leereeves wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliberate omission of facts that don't fit a particular opinion is a form of advocacy for that opinion. The NYT is entitled to their opinion, but I think it should be expressed in an editorial, not used to choose what facts to report.

You cannot call a reported news story an 'editorial' because the facts it chooses to present are somehow inconvenient to your agenda. Contra repeated claims that this piece was transformed by addition of "opinions", it seems to be composed entirely of verifiable facts.

I hardly ever use reddit, and I'll certainly agree that reddit (especially the default subs) is dominated by young males and can be, at times, misogynistic.

If I have an agenda here, it's to ask for better from professional journalists.