Facebook Forces NYT to Quietly Delete Unflattering Reference to Sheryl Sandberg
lawandcrime.com
lawandcrime.com
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.nytimes.co...
Here is the specific diff where the Sandberg reference was changed:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...
That said, if the explicit conflict between Stamos and Sandberg was a prominent detail, then many folks would argue that the NYT should have a clarification or editor's note explaining the change. However, it's worth noting that the reference to the conflict between Sandberg and Stamos is not omitted from the final edition.
Original:
> Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
Final:
> Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”
The latter reference seems to be just as damning to Sandberg when it comes to her complacency in policing the FB platform, though it doesn't say that her disagreement with Stamos was specifically about the Russia question.
You could still argue that this merits a clarification, i.e. A previous version of this story stated that Ms. Sandberg disagreed with Mr. Stamos in his advocacy for "investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook". However, Mr. Stamos said that he and Sandberg disagreed in general with how proactive Facebook should be in policing its own platform, but the two never specifically debated the issue with respect to revelations of Russian interference.
Here's the repo for the site, including its scrapers: https://github.com/ecprice/newsdiffs
Final: "policing its own platform"
Note that the reference to disagreement about disclosing the information was removed. This seems like a significant change.
> Mr. Stamos would be the first high-ranking employee to leave Facebook since controversy over disinformation on its site. Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.
Sandberg's name, and the inability to address growing problems "including Russian interference", are all in the same sentence. If Sandberg called in a favor for this, it was a pretty weak-ass favor. I don't think it matches the OP's assessment that Sandberg re: Russia was "wiped clean off the ether".
In fact, it seems the OP itself requires a correction, because it made the same mistake you did:
> Now, Sandberg’s name and the story’s only reference to her alleged role in frustrating Stamos’ attempts to highlight and root out Russian troll influence on the platform are gone because someone at the New York Times replaced the entire sentence.
Again, people can argue that maybe Sandberg asked NYT to move the reference to later in the story. But I mean, there's still the issue of why Sandberg would not pressure NYT to hold off on this story which is extremely damaging to FB as a whole.
And FB PR hasn't commented either. The OP does not say he has inside sources that tell him otherwise. So what is that that is being asserted here? Because this is the only thing in the story:
> Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published.
Interestingly the lead article is, "Here's how to see which apps have access to your Facebook - and cut them off".
Sources:
[1] Zuckerberg has sold more Facebook stock in the last 3 months than any insider at any other company => https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/zuckerbergs-facebook-stock-s...
[2] Zuckerberg saved tens of millions of dollars by selling Facebook stock ahead of Monday’s decline: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zuckerberg-saved-tens-of-m...
So given that he's probably not an idiot, it looks really bad to sell if he thinks it's going to drop, and the money he made from selling is far outweighed by the drop from the controversies, it doesn't seem likely to me that it was because "he knew it was going to drop."
I don't like the guy but my feeling is it was unlucky timing.
Those trades were part of his 10b5-1, a scheduled trading plan set in place at a minimum 3 months ahead of time and typically extends out 12+ months. Trades in the plan are protected from insider trading accusations and considered an "affirmative defense" [1].
While you can trade shares outside your 10b5-1 plan, those trades aren't protected from insider trading accusations.
[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/03/24/a-guide-to-rule-1...
Shoot, Stamos had apparently been nagging them for a while leading up to the December reorg, and we're only just hearing about it.
You came up with the idea that there would be a conspiracy. You are the conspiracy theorist.
Especially given that the facts are that (a) selling stock involves a lot of people, (b) Zuckerberg has gone on record saying he will be selling stock, (c) he has plans for politics/philanthropy which will depend on an intact reputation and (d) he will be so rich i.e. multi-billionaire regardless that it seems strange to risk jail time for a few hundred million.
If you make claims. Then you need to back them up.
And why is it surprising that Zuckerberg has sold lots of Facebook stock. (1) He owns the most and (2) he has previously gone on record as saying he will be selling stock to finance his charity.
Working out scheduling for testimony to a UK parliamentary inquiry, a couple US congressional committees, and the US FEC?
More seriously, the question is being asked everywhere, even, apparently, within Facebook: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/technology/mark-zuckerberg-f...
Which sentence, the one with the question mark at the end or the other one? The answer is different for each, and which is which should be obvious.
To answer your question about the question....it ends with a question mark, so it's probably a rhetorical question suggesting that Zuckerberg has his hands full at the moment. I'm sure you've seen the headline about MPs requesting his presence at a hearing.
Articles frequently change in content, titles, and so on after publication, after all - that's why HN has to update titles so frequently.
Edit: Whoops, missed it the first read-through. Looks like the change was confirmed by the original reporter to be as the result of a request from the Facebook PR team.
When it comes to submission titles, HN has a tendency to change them for no obvious reason even if the original title hasn't changed.
Respectable sites usually include a list of corrections and changes made to an article after publication
Generally, most people who read an erroneous original will never see the corrected version.
There used to be a site that tracked this.
Here's the page for the article in question: http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.nytimes.co...
The story in this blog post is bullshit; it's made up.
> I was the NYT reporter who was in contact w/Facebook over our Stamos story yesterday. We didn't remove any references to Sandberg at Facebook's request. (For the record, Facebook made no such request). If anything we added MORE detail to the story between the 1st and 2nd versions
https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296
EDIT to clarify: Nicole Perlroth is the reporter mentioned by name in the blog post who confirmed the chronology. Sheera Frenkel was another reporter on the same NYT byline who tweeted the above. Here's a tweet from Perlroth too:
> Echoing Sheera here. @colinkalmbacher needs to correct his blog post to reflect that it is inaccurate, even his attempt at our name spellings. He should also address why he chose to ignore our responses, which contradicted everything he wrote.
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976241288411430912
As snowwrestler pointed out, you are wrong in the most exact way. The OP article did not provide evidence or confirmation that Facebook PR team made this request, or that NYT made an editorial change because of FBPR. The OP says that it never got comment from Facebook PR. Meanwhile, the NYT reporters have outright denied that FBPR had any influence:
https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888
The second tweet is probably more interesting. The reporter says that she talked to FB PR, because it was how FBPR wanted to deliver a formal statement re: Stamos. This is common practice, because of how anal/tightly wound companies are in wanting to control the official message is. And reporters have discretion of how to interpret or what to include from the PR message (the NYT apparently excerpted just, "as productive").
There is literally no evidence offered to support collusion between FB and NYT. There are no witnesses or whistleblowers, not even anonymous ones, with any claims. And everyone obviously involved (NYT and FB) has outright denied it.
The headline for this story is absolute trash -- because the story doesn't even establish that Facebook even talked to NYT about changing its story, nevermind forcing the New York Times to censor itself. Under HN guidelines it should be changed to a much weaker assertion but I can't imagine how to water it down without rendering it pointless.
Do you mean the assertion that NYT made these changes in response to being reached by Facebook's PR team? (This is difficult to prove but suggested by the facts we have.)
Do you mean the assertion that the NYT regularly changes headlines in response to criticism of those being covered? (This is alleged, but I have no proof of this.)
Do you mean the assertion that Facebook contacted the Times after the article was published? (I highly doubt that this is false, and it being true suggests that the first point was true.)
In short, the opening paragraph, which the article leans on struck a nerve.
The New York Times offers powerful third parties the ability to
edit away–that is, to delete from the internet–unfavorable coverage
appearing in the paper of record’s online edition.
The article goes through rounds of edits post-publish. It’s a established process and not done as-hoc.
Also, just because you work(ed) at a company it does not mean you are fully aware of everything that goes on there, so don't make blanket statements about what can or can't happen.
Employees are often some of the least informed about the inner workings of an organization, as they tend to dismiss uncomfortable findings out of hand and refuse to read about them.
Furthermore, those same NYT reporters who apparently were cowed by Sandberg and Facebook PR published another article that same day in which the focus is on the disgruntled CSO:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/alex-stamos-fa...
This was part of Facebook's PR push too?
Can you prove this?
> Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees...
This is definitely an interesting graf, but I don't (and neither do the NYT reporters, ostensibly) think that it's the key part of the story, not even of the 300-word blurb. In any case, this blurb was updated (rather, replaced) by a 1,300 article at the end of the day:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...
The critics of NYT think that the "consternation" line should not have been erased because it apparently is so directly damning of how Sandberg was resistant to deal with Russian interference. The NYT reporters have disagreed; they see the 1000+ words adding far more evidence of how Stamos tried to warn FB.
In any case, the article author is trying to associate 3 unrelated events together:
- NYT made a major update/rewrite of its article about Facebook
- People are mad that the most damning line against Sandberg (re: Russia) was watered down
- Facebook PR contacted NYT after the first version of the story/blurb was published.
The OP has a hypothesis. But no evidence to support it. "Facebook Forces NYT" is not the right headline because the author never purports to prove or claim that Facebook forced NYT to do anything.
Let's assume the NYT can be influenced to change/kill stories. After all, the Obama administration was able to get the NYT to delay/suppress stories on national security grounds [0], and this doesn't count all the stories that have been starved because of discouragement/apathy by editors.
But these are stories that have been stopped before they saw the light of day. This reference to Sandberg was published in a widely-publicized (i.e. banner breaking news headline on nytimes.com) breaking news story. To censor it for any reason is going to be a difficult and embarrassing and noticeable decision, and one that is going to piss off someone in the editorial chain (e.g. the reporter, or her editor).
So if Sandberg has the ability to pressure the NYT to revoke this reference, why would she do it now? The story is already a major clusterfuck for Facebook because it ties the abrupt dismissal of Facebook's entire security team to allegations about Russian/CA malfeasance on FB's platform. How much face does Sandberg save when the entire company is eating shit, with Sandberg at the helm and being conspicuously absent from making a public statement?
If Sandberg had editorial power, don't you think she would've exercised it by having prior review of the entire story? If the NYT editors were so afraid of her that they'd cave in to pressure to retroactively edit a story in her favor, don't you think they would've brought this story to her attention before publishing it as a breaking news item and spreading it all over Twitter?
NYT famously has one of the most anal-retentive social media policies among all media organizations. If Sandberg had real influence, NYT reporters would not be tweeting this kind of stuff about her:
https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/975899584550465537
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/975793549076611072
FWIW, the author of the NYT article in question has responded to the claims made by the submitted Law & Crime article:
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976156184909553664
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976157825331216384
[0] https://www.wnyc.org/story/nyt-reporter-james-risen-reportin...
No-one is suggesting that Sandberg had the editorial power of reviewing all Facebook-related articles before they were published, so the question of why she did not suppress this article before it first appeared does not arise. NYTs failure to seek permission beforehand can adequately be explained by a) it didn't expect the response it got and b) if it were in the habit of seeking such approval, it would destroy its brand, and its reason for existence.
The issue is that the NYT caved in to a demand without even following its normal policy of explaining a correction, and this is a serious matter regardless of whether Sandberg or Facebook were ill-advised to follow this course of action.
The article's author's responses look to me like an attempt at damage control, in that they talk around the central issue with heavy use of weasel words. If the original was deleted because it was superseded by a clearer follow-up, why is the follow-up notably unclear on this very issue?
If you start with this premise then you are already begging the question. That is, it's not a given that this revision benefits Sandberg, nevermind that she pulled the strings to make it happen. The reporters' responses have been that the story has been revised to add additional detail (which includes doubling the mentions of Sandberg by name). If you think Sandberg doesn't have such a cozy relationship as to have prior-review power -- or more likely, the suppressive power of reporters being told not to pursue such embarrassing scoops in the first place -- then her asking for this change is going to rankle feathers. So she made this demand, but was OK with the reporters adding this completely unnecessary mention of how reputation-paranoid Sandberg and Zuckerberg are?
> The public reaction caused some at Facebook to recoil at revealing more, said the current and former employees. Since the 2016 election, Facebook has paid unusual attention to the reputations of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg, conducting polls to track how they are viewed by the public, said Tavis McGinn, who was recruited to the company last April and headed the executive reputation efforts through September 2017.
And how is it that Sandberg successfully intimidated the NYT to change their story, and then less than 24 hours later, the same NYT reporters publish an a followup that centers completely on the disgruntled executive (CSO Stamos) and is even more explicit about Sandberg and Stamos fighting over Russian interference -- including implying a direct cause and effect between their deteriorating relationship and Stamos's punishment?
> By October, the relationship between Mr. Stamos and Ms. Sandberg had deteriorated over how to handle Russian interference on Facebook and how best to reorganize Facebook’s security team before the midterm elections, according to more than half a dozen people who work or formerly worked at the company. Mr. Stamos proposed that instead of reporting to Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch, he report directly to Facebook’s higher-ups.
> Instead, executives released Mr. Stamos from much of his day-to-day responsibility, employees said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/alex-stamos-fa...
It is indeed possible that this statement is a falsehood: "Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published", but I am disinclined to believe it is simply on the basis of questionable questions about motives, when the facts behind those questions could equally be explained by both parties trying to back off, in their own ways, from their initial mistakes.
And the issue of whether it was Sandberg, specifically, who initiated the initial retraction request, is a red herring.
OK, I'll make my argument by assuming that I'm wrong and you are right:
- NYT defers to FB and Sandberg
- Yesterday, an NYT article was edited and a phrase particularly damning and specific to Sandberg was removed without notice.
- It's reasonable to assume Sandberg pressured NYT to make that change.
OK, I propose these facts:
This change was made at 9:21PM EST on Monday, 2+ hours after the story originally published at 7PM:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...
At 8:33PM Tuesday, the two reporters for the first story published this story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/alex-stamos-fa...
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.nytimes.co...
The End for Facebook’s Security Evangelist https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/alex-stamos-fa...
I bring up the time stamps to argue that this story would've had to been partially reported and on deck for it to have been ready to publish less than 24 hours later. It's reasonable to assume they had some fo this reporting done at the time Sandberg is alleged to have coerced them into changing their story.
This follow up story is entirely focused on CSO Stamos, i.e. the Facebook exec who was forced out of a job and is the exec that advocated the most against Sandberg when it came to detecting Russian interference. The NYT reporters published this story sympathetic to Stamos despite agreeing to soften their coverage just 24-hours before to please Sandberg.
This follow story ends with a damning claim, that Stamos and Sandberg had a "deteriorating" relationship specifically on the issue of "how to handle Russian interference on Facebook and how to best reorganize Facebook's security team before the midterm elections." Even worse, the story alleges that when Stamos asked for a restructure to avoid reporting to general counsel, Stamos's work and department was dissolved. To put these two events (Sandberg disagreement, Stamos losing his job) in consecutive paragraphs strongly implies that Sandberg fired Stamos because of the Russia thing.
Even worse, this story sources this claim to "more than half a dozen people who work or formerly worked at the company."
-----
Assuming those facts above, here's the argument from contradiction: the NYT reporters are accused of erasing the following sentence regarding Sheryl Sandberg:
> Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters
The allegation is that the above sentence is damaging to Sandberg, and she went out of her way to threaten/pressure the NYT to change/remove it.
But as the facts stand, the NYT has published a separate story that states this:
> By October, the relationship between Mr. Stamos and Ms. Sandberg had deteriorated over how to handle Russian interference on Facebook and how best to reorganize Facebook’s security team before the midterm elections, according to more than half a dozen people who work or formerly worked at the company. Mr. Stamos proposed that instead of reporting to Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch, he report directly to Facebook’s higher-ups. Instead, executives released Mr. Stamos from much of his day-to-day responsibility, employees said.
- The "consternation" sentence was so offensive to Sandberg that she used influence to get NYT to revise/remove it from a story yesterday.
- Today, those same editors published a story even more damning regarding Sandberg and Stamos and Russian interference.
- That this followup story was allowed to be published (and 4+ hours later, has had no revisions), contradicts the assumption that NYT is subservient to Sandberg/Facebook.
OK, so your argument is basically "correlation is causation", i.e.
- Facebook PR contacted Perlroth at some point
- After talking to FB PR, Perlroth and colleagues edited their story.
- Therefore, we assume the edit was made because of Facebook's wishes.
Note how the OP doesn't explain what this "edit" that Perlroth admits to and confirms. She responds to him on Twitter [0] when he asks her about the story being "wiped"; he characterizes her response as "downplay[ing] the change". Uh OK, I guess that's a matter of opinion. But the OP fails to mention that the edit/update in question involves changing a first-edition story from 300 words to 1,300 words. Here's actual data:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...
But if your reasoning is "correlation is causation" and "no such thing as coincidences", it's good to know where you stand, I don't think there's much more need to quibble.
[0] https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976157486188081152
1. Perlroth et al publish a story in the NYT that arguably reflects poorly on Sandberg.
2. Facebook's PR firm contacts the NYT post-publication requesting that changes be made to the story.
3. Within a few hours the story is edited in a way that arguably is less negative toward Sandberg.
Given just this information, is it fair to claim that 2 caused 3? You (with your "conspiracy theory" level of attention to detail and logic) say "no"; mannykannot says "yes". While logically you would seem to be right, let's see how strong we can make the argument that this series of events actually does show causation. How about this:
1) Facebook is willing to pay an expensive PR firm to reach out to the NYT with the goal of changing the coverage. At the least, I think we can say that Facebook (and probably their expensive PR firm) believe that such edit requests produce results. Do you think they are wasting their money? If so, why should we trust an idealistic academic on this rather than a self-interested profit-driven firm willing?
2) If the authors know that there is pushback from Facebook on the story, they will edit the story differently than if there was no pushback. The only question is how big the difference is. Maybe it only prevents them from adding further negativity, or maybe it makes them choose slightly more defensible word choices. They might eventually redirect their efforts in a different piece, but do you really believe that knowledge of pushback will have truly zero effect on their editorial choices? And we've established that it's a non-zero influence, aren't we (like Churchill) just haggling about the price?
3) In addition to having journalistic ideals, the NYT is also a business who needs to be concerned about their reputation as a trustworthy news source. Facebook is one of very few companies influential enough to make or break the NYT's reputation. Thus when Facebook reaches out to the business side of the NYT suggesting that greater consideration be given to their side of the story, it would be prudent for the NYT to do so, or at least to give Facebook the impression that they are doing so. While this doesn't directly explain any individual edit, it might explain a general trajectory whereby edits are generally made in a direction favorable to Facebook. Do you deny that these forces exist?
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888
> FB PR gave us a statement from Stamos after the first post in which he described the dynamic "as productive." We appended that to our story, while also laying out disagreements.
I'm assuming this was the graf that was added:
> Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”
The other reporter, Sheera Frenkel, adds the specifics that Facebook PR "made no such request" about removing references to Sandberg:
https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296
-----
So what's your rationale, given the complete absence of evidence, such as an inside source -- to distrust the NYT reporters out of hand? Why do you think the benefit of the doubt should be given to the reporter from Law&Crime, who is only making allegations? He's more knowledgeable and trustworthy than the actual reporters who investigated and published this story in the first place?
Maybe it's not clear enough that the Stamos vs. Sandberg story was the result of reporter effort; Stamos's departure (nevermind the reasons and the controversies) was not an official announcement. So I admit my bias that it's hard to believe why we should suspect the NYT reporters of censoring their own story when it's entirely their fault that the story even exists?
As you can guess from my phrasing, I don't absolutely distrust them, and merely suggest that their statements should be assessed with an awareness of their self-interest. I presume that the authors believe that they did not make edits in response to threats from Facebook, although I'd expect them to say the same even if they did feel pressured. But in the same way that the "anthropic principle" is outside formal logic but sometimes produces interesting insights, I think it's worth considering what conclusions can be drawn from the fact that these authors remain gainfully employed by the New York Times.
it's hard to believe why we should suspect the NYT reporters of censoring their own story when it's entirely their fault that the story even exists?
I agree, but censoring is not absolute, not everyone within the paper has the same goals, and no individual has just a single goal. There are tensions pulling the journalists in multiple directions, and Facebook's PR firm is one of these tensions. Perhaps getting a story out with minor modifications satisfies enough of the goals of the parties involved. Would you concede that "zero impact" from corporate criticism is probably an unachievable ideal, and that Facebook's pushback here might have had at least a tiny influence in the way the story evolved (and will continue to evolve)?
More generally, I'm dubious that a for-profit press can ever please all stakeholders. Are you familiar with this criticism of the NYT from a couple years ago: "An obituary of The New York Times" [https://medium.com/@johannes.wahlstrom/an-obituary-of-the-ne...]. I thought it did a good job of pointing to some previous examples of the imperfect wall between business and journalistic goals.
I'm not asking us to discern with extreme acuity the integrity and honesty of these NYT journalists. I'm limiting it to the claims that have been made against them, their responses, and the evidence available. Trying to draw conclusions about their scope and length of gainful employment and what that says about them is all an unnecessary tangent.
I absolutely agree that censorship (and racism, and hate, and everything not binary) is not an absolute. And that journalists are influenced by many biases, overt and hidden. In fact, the NYT journalists in question could be compromised if they are avid FB users and have many fond memories.
But why is that the topic of debate? Law&crime has made a specific assertion about how FB interacted with NYT reporters about a specific situation -- this negative FB story. I don't have to argue about whether FB's pushback had "zero impact" because I don't have to agree or disagree. Those small factors may push this question one way or another.
But before considering those minute details, and tackling the ongoing issue of the trustworthiness of corporate media and the presence of harmful incentives, we have to agree on some easily observable facts, regarding a well-defined question.
In other words, I don't think I have a lot to disagree with you. But if I have to convince you about the unified theory of journalism and business, just in arguing about whether the OP is full of shit, I don't think I can win that :)
Depends on which OP you mean. I don't think mannykannot made a strong argument here, but I was surprised by this. I seem to recall upvoting him on numerous previous occasions for comments I liked, and that I thought were logically sound. I was trying to figure out whether there was stronger argument hiding underneath his (at least superficially) logically flawed one.
If by OP you mean the author of the blog post on Law and Crime, yeah, I agree it seemed irredeemably awful. I'm willing to believe that it's a low quality hit piece for clicks and not worth considering more closely. Are they thought to be a brand that normally has higher standards? My expectations for mannykannot (a name I recognize on HN) are significantly higher than for an unfamiliar linked blog.
But why is that the topic of debate?
The actual debate of interest for me is why you and mannykannot seem to disagree so completely here, and why it was so difficult for the two of you to even make sense of each others' arguments. From the outside, it looked like both of you were arguing in good faith, but getting nowhere. Logically, I'm mostly with you, but while I find your argument compelling, others apparently do not. I'm interested in understanding the underlying cause of this.
The disagreement between me and mannykannot has to do with our fundamental assumptions. He believes that the OP's allegation -- that Facebook PR contacted the NYT, and the NYT afterwards edited its story -- is a sound premise. My argument (among many) is that the OP has provided no evidence for assuming that premise.
Not only did the NYT reporter explain what FBPR told her (they gave her an official statement to be associated with Stamos), they've denied that FBPR pressured them to do anything else. FB PR certainly hasn't said anything. I know that this is what we should expect to be the case if NYT and FB were in cahoots, but in these situations, the reporter making such an allegation has done the investigative reporting to find sources who can make the claim (NYT's story on Facebook is very dependent on anonymous sources).
So from my perspective, there is no reason to think that FB PR visit and NYT story update/edit have a causal relationship. I think mannykannot think I doth protest too much (which is fair!) and that my rationalizations and evidence is no more valid than what a conspiracy theorist would be doing.
That's fine, HN isn't about winning debates :)
While correlation alone does not automatically imply causation, causes result in correlation. I have noticed an uptick recently of invalid uses of the 'correlation is not causation' statement, as if it were a conclusive rebuttal, in situations where the correlation was, in fact, a consequence of the cause, and this seems to be the case here.
The rest of your argument rests on a number of assumptions about which specific people initiated actions, their motives, and that these specific people were each adopting for themselves a single, unchanging, rational and consistent policy -- so much so that the phrase quoted above must have been a fabrication. To me, that seems to require that a lot of the uncertain issues all line up in a particular direction (to be correlated, if you will), and the episode is more parsimoniously explained by the NYT (perhaps in the persons of a junior editor and PR staffer) initially making a decision that the larger organization realized was a mistake, but which then compounded the problem by attempting to gloss over the initial response. The good news, as your references indicate, is that the NYT's action seems to have been a temporary aberration.
> "Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published"
You think it's clear that the author is intending to state a casual relationship. Great. So my point is that the author is obliged to prove how he knows this is a causal relationship.
You can re-read his post all the way up and down, he provides no evidence. Meanwhile, Perlroth has explained [0] why she was in contact with FB's PR people -- because they wanted to give her Stamos's formal statement. This statement is quoted in Perlroth's story.
So we're still back at square one, starting with the author's hypothesis that FB's contact with NYT is related to the NYT's edit/update of their article. You're free to assume without evidence that it is more than a correlation, just as I'm free to take up skepticism. In a court case, if the NYT thought it'd be a good idea to sue for defamation, I really wonder what the L&C author would use as evidence. NYT, at least, will have the messages/emails between its reporters and FB.
[0] https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888
It is somewhat thought provoking though that said newspaper may have felt compelled to comply with the request because of Facebook's power (for instance not wanting to lose favorable placement in feed or trending sections).
So to me the newsworthiness of this depends on how likely it is that they changed it because it was simply inaccurate versus something more nefarious (such as above). I believe that may be too subjective to determine at this point so probably no fruitful discussion can come in trying to figure that out.
Sometimes newsworthy things become newsworthy after the actual time of events. Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse had been hinted at for years but only this past year did the amount of reporting and attention cause him to face real legal and business problems. Same with Bill Cosby.
Yes, it is newsworthy because while those of us on HN have been familiar with all the crap that Facebook has been doing for a while now, the common folk have not.