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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

> PayPal told me that “the security of customer accounts is a top priority for the company.”

I wish journalists would ridicule this corporate bullshit lingo instead of just relaying it. I'm fairly certain that anyone that ever had contact with PayPal's (or Amazon's, or probably any other large corporation's) customer service with issues regarding security can attest that it's absolutely not one of their top priorities.

They haven't even bothered to make their official emails not look like phishing attempts. They don't care about security.

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It's called the "right of reply". It's courtesy to reach out to a company and include their response without critique about whether it's "corporate bullshit".

I agree that reaching out to whomever's being criticised is a courtesy and, sometimes, even legally required. But I don't think it's right to not critique. When a company blatantly uses doublespeak, that should absolutely be critiqued.

You're talking about blurring the difference between journalism and opinion.

No, the journalist could easily find independent evidence that suggests the corporate statement is bullshit.

It should be challenged and ridiculed. That is the journalist's duty, and they failed.

Their job is not to be a copy and paste machine for company press releases.

I agree with your first and third sentences, but not your second.

You don't think they should challenge a company's claim, or should they, but not in the same article?

It's not the journalist's duty to ridicule anyone. Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" was very entertaining, and even somewhat informative, but I think he would be one of the first to say that it wasn't journalism. I don't like corporate bullshit lingo either but when that's what they say as their formal statement to the press then relaying it is the journalistic duty.

It's one thing if the company is outright lying, but PR blather doesn't really count (for all that it's pointless and annoying.) In any event, yeah, if they want to editorialize, that's fine but it's done in a separate "Editorial" section. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial )

You wouldn't need to take Jon Stewart's approach though. I'd be fine if the ridiculing comes from another party that the journalist gives room to. Ask a consumer advocate what they think of PayPal's statement, or ask an infosec professional.

Letting the PR speech stand by itself without large red arrows pointing at the absurdity gives it way too much power imho.

I "feel ya" but you've got those options already. In other words, maybe you're actually complaining about people's taste in news media?

Journalism is opinion.

It's the opinion of the journalist: is this information worth writing about?

It's the opinion of the editor: is this part worth changing?

It's the opinion of the publisher: is this piece worth publishing?

Maybe I'm just getting old, but this sounds like the lyrics to a bad 80's punk rock song.

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

> The right of reply or right of correction generally means the right to defend oneself against public criticism in the same venue where it was published. In some countries, such as Brazil, it is a legal or even constitutional right. In other countries, it is not a legal right as such, but a right which certain media outlets and publications choose to grant to people who have been severely criticised by them, as a matter of editorial policy.

You might not like it but it is a thing.

And if they choose to defend themselves with a load of PR doublespeak BS, well, that's also news, eh?

If the reporter adds "...which is obviously bullshit." at the end that's the difference between journalism and a SNL sketch. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9qblOghuKk )

> They haven't even bothered to make their official emails not look like phishing attempts. They don't care about security.

Man, now that you mention about it, I thought the same thing every time I see an email from PayPal and just disregarded the thought because it's so common from websites and nobody cares. It's _literally_ the business model of some of the top email marketing companies.

In either case, now that you mention it, I don't think it was mentioned in yesterday's six vulns disclosed or in today's.

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