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Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook spokesperson Lisa Stratton said: "This piece is purely editorial. We pitched this to Teen Vogue and worked with their team on the piece over the past few months." (Companies' communication teams will sometimes pitch news outlets on possible stories, in the same way news outlets will reach out to companies to ask for interviews and access, and it's not a sign of a financial relationship or underhand behaviour.)

Maybe I'm naive but the idea that Facebook (or whatever company) is "pitching possible stories" to news outlets seems bizarre to me.

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I will let you in on a secret then, this is how 1/3 of stories work. I have gotten such stories written about my companies. These writers are under constant pressure to churn out stories and welcome someone doing most of the work for them.

Here is a general rule of thumb when reading an article. If what you are reading is not news, you are being marketed to.

If this seems bizarre, I would strongly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent.

A massive amount of news is produced this way because it is a result of a symbiotic relationship between journalists who have a constant need to produce content and powerful institutions who can produce a constant reliable firehose of such content.

Think about how when an announcement is made, a bunch of detailed news stories drop at the same moment. This is pre-arranged. Companies employ PR professionals (or contract with PR firms) who have relationships with news outlets and they pitch stories via those relationships. The news outlet does need to be careful about whether to take these stories at face value if it has a reputation to protect. It also goes for politicians, sports teams, all sorts of entities who care about public relations.

Read Crystalizing Public Opinion by Edward Bernays, father of public relations, to understand the origins of this practice. As thundergolfer mentioned, Manufacturing Consent is also a great read, though not as directly related.

https://www.amazon.com/Crystallizing-Public-Opinion-Edward-B...

> it's not a sign of a financial relationship or underhand behaviour.

It may or may not be a sign of a financial relationship, but it's certainly underhanded behavior.

Well if it makes you feel any better, most large corps do this, especially brand conscious ones.

If they have a public relations department, they are pitching stories like this.

Obligatory PG submarine post: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

”Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.”

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