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Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

The report is discussing a survey of 190 articles, 6% of which they deemed negative and 54% deemed neutral.

I'm not sure how finding two articles contradicts any of that.

Those numbers mean nothing though unless, at a minimum, you're doing the same thing for other similar companies. For all we know, using the same methodology, one might find comparable numbers for other companies with, say, similar market cap.

Huh? What does this have to do with the original point: that finding two negative articles on google doesn't necessarily contradict anything in their analysis about the breakdown of positive/negative articles?

It could show that there is some other effect happening here. Maybe that effect is that newspapers arent generally critical enough of large cap tech companies.

But it could show that the Bezos connection between WaPo and Amazon is not the primary issue.

*edit typos

Again, what does this have to do with the comment I was replying to? Two negative articles found on google don't necessarily contradict FAIR's analysis, whatever you think of it.

Does the "newspapers not being critical enough" relate, in one way or another, to the point the commenter was making about how easy it was to find those two critical articles on Google? If anything those points would seem to pull in opposite directions.

If you would stop being so hostile, you would realize that both points were extremely relevant.

1.) If a casual search on Google can find two negative articles, it draws to question the article's methodology. If a casual searcher can find articles that didn't make it into the sample, how many more were missed? Is it possible that positive articles get shared more often and are thus easier to find? Or, if they were included (and get indexed highly) does it mean negative articles have significantly more traction, thus making it likely that 6% negative will have a greater impact than 94% positive?

2.) Without knowing what proportion of positive/negative articles exist for other companies, it's quite hard to argue that the Amazon coverage is atypically positive.

The question on the table is what (if any) conclusions can be drawn about the veracity of FAIR's report from finding two critical articles on google. I noted that a survey of 190 articles isn't necessarily shown to be wrong by the discovery of two critical articles on Google. Maybe there's a "there" there, but it's speculative, well short of the conclusion that "TFA just straightforwardly wrong to an embarrassing degree."

Berebo and elefanten both jumped in and observed that you might find similar positive/neutral/negative coverage breakdowns for other companies. Well, you certainly might. But doesn't speak one way or the other to the question of what two critical articles found on Google say about the veracity of FAIR's reporting. In light of this, are those two critical articles found on Google now better evidence? Worse? What's the connection?

Moreover, elefanten's point pulls in the opposite direction of sedachv's. sedachv suggests maybe there is more critical coverage than WaPo is getting credit for, meanwhile elefanten is suggesting that maybe there is a lack of critical coverage, not just at WaPo but across the industry.

You're saying that these observations are "relevant" in some general sense, which is true enough. But I am specifically asking what their connection is to the two critical articles found on Google. And because I'm asking this you seem to think it means that I don't understand their point and am being hostile.

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