Unsafe Working Conditions at Tesla’s Factory | Hacker News Reader

Unsafe Working Conditions at Tesla’s Factory

buzzfeed.com

32 pointsscribu18 comments

If Tesla wanted to treat its staff like dirt, they should have moved their manufacturing to the Southeast, where there are weaker union provisions, and cheaper labor.

Yet the factories it's operating have significantly higher rates of injury than even those workplaces.

Want to read the article but ... buzzfeed...

They expanded into reporting a while ago now. Do you refuse to read reports from CBS because they also broadcast Big Bang Theory?

They built their business on the lowest form of tabloid clickbait that could possibly be imagined. You can't go from a position of 0 integrity, and then say "Hey, we're expanding into an integrity market. You're simply ignorant if you don't read our content".

Well, why not? The reporting is adhering to the normal standards of the profession and seems basically firewalled from the meme listicles. Even mainstream news organizations are borrowing a lot of those techniques for engagement anyway. And to return to the CBS example, they existed purely as entertainment for nearly a decade before introducing a regular news broadcast. They don't deserve complete, unquestioning trust, but what news source does?

CBS didn't have integrity issues as a broadcaster before expanding into news. Buzzfeed's entire business model has been based on no-integrity clickbait garbage, that's what their brand represents. It doesn't matter if they decide to hire a few "real journalists", or at least what they think "real journalists" are, they have no credibility at all.

Fortunately, they've documented where their claims come from, so you don't need to just trust them in this case. And I think your image of the edifying nature of early radio may be unfounded.

It worked for Playboy.

Hey, that's a joke: BuzzFeed made it.

Who cares if it was published in Tiger Beat? It offers substantial documentation for its claims. It seems like a lot of folks want to attack Buzzfeed because they don't like what the article has to say but don't have any substantive rebuttal.

Every week there is a hit-piece on SpaceX, or Tesla, or Musk. Very rarely is the article grounded in reality. It is usually easy to prove the article false within 5 minutes.

I'm not even going to bother to read anything from Buzzfeed. There is almost no chance that any real reporting was done for this article.

So you have proof that the claims that Tesla ran a factory with higher-than-average rates of injury and fired workers who tried to unionize are false? Does interviewing fifteen workers and going through public records not count as reporting now?

They were nominated for a Pulitzer not long ago, so maybe check your ego.

I do see where the sentiment against BuzzFeed comes from... As said by another commenter, it's difficult to go from no integrity to having integrity. I would be interested though to know which piece they were nominated for, as I don't follow that side of things very often. I wasn't aware that they did anything differently to their original formula, so I can understand why others aren't either.

It's been the better part of a decade since they began this shift, but I think it was really during the election that they became prominent because they broke a handful of big stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed

> Originally known for online quizzes, "listicles", and pop culture articles, the company has grown into a global media and technology company providing coverage on a variety of topics including politics, DIY, animals and business.[7][8] In late 2011, Ben Smith of Politico was hired as editor-in-chief to expand the site into serious journalism, long-form journalism, and reportage.

[...]

> BuzzFeed News received a 2016 National Magazine Award in the category of Public Interest.[35] Other awards won by BuzzFeed journalists include a 2014 National Press Foundation award,[78] 2015 Sidney Award,[79] and 2017 British Journalism Award.[80] In 2017, BuzzFeed also won Webby Awards for Best News App and Best Interview/Talk Show (for Another Round),[81] president Greg Coleman was named Publishing Executive of the Year by Digiday,[82] and journalist Chris Hamby was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.[83] BuzzFeed is a member of the White House press corps.[84]

At a certain point you're just sticking your head in the sand.

Cheers for that!

> At a certain point you're just sticking your head in the sand.

To be honest, I don't think this is the case. Personally, I'm not actively going out of my way to avoid Buzzfeed articles - I genuinely just haven't looked at any in about that period of time. There possibly are other people like that.

As an aside, I don't personally have anything against the organization, it's just that their content hasn't really appealed to me in the past (especially so since I'm not in the US), so I haven't consumed it.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. It's not like I check BuzzFeed every day or anything. I am just a little annoyed that someone posted this article, which is interesting and involved some real shoe leather, and almost every single comment is just "lol BuzzFeed."

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