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Comment by sodality2 | Hacker News Reader

Before the negative comments for Buzzfeed come in, please check out their investigations: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations

These are hard-hitting, actual journalist investigations that is absolutely on a different level than their regular content on the main site. It seems the ad revenue from the Bad Buzzfeed funds their investigative journalism.

Edit: Yes, even BuzzfeedNews.com is sort of bad - it's a mix. Below article linked from throwaway894345 is an example of a bad one but a lot of the articles on the main page seem to be legitimate news (if not as detailed as their investigations unit).

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I remember Buzzfeed News stoking up drama whenever they could, but maybe they’ve turned a corner since I stopped paying them attention.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/first-they-ca...

> PEOPLE ARE MAD. FURIOUS.

Yeah, if an article has single sentences of bold text between tweets or images, it's a Bad Buzzfeed article. That's definitely a prime example of crappy journalism. There's so many reasons why it's not good but when you realize it's marketed to 14-26 year olds, it makes a bit more sense.

This is completely false, I work in banking and I remember being super excited by the FinCEN files, but it was utterly ridiculous! They pumped it up just to tell you our own compliance department was reporting a lot of things... like dudes really, yes you got a leak of the official documents we send to the frigging regulator... this is the opposite of hiding things, I could not believe it.

And of course it had no effect because all it did was hamper investigations !! Absolute trash honestly :(

The poor girl who did the "podcast" to try to explain it sounded so ignorant, I was like "this person has no idea what a financial crime is or what a bank would do to hide it". "Look HSBC reported a drug cartel used it to do that and look look they told the regulator"... huuuuh... where's the problem here ? How is HSBC robbing anyone ? Is HSBC really complicit of selling drugs here ? :D (I do accept their critic HSBC's compliance dpt was slow in implementing the regulation)

Buzzfeed really feels like an "ends justify the means" kind of business. Cheap, tabloid news funding "real" journalism. There's merit to the idea, but under the financial pressure of a public corp, my money is that what little actual journalism they do will slowly die off.

> Cheap, tabloid news funding "real" journalism. There's merit to the idea

I respect your opinion but I couldn't disagree more strongly. To me, an outlet publishing trash irrevocably taints anything else they're putting out, however hard-hitting and "real" it may be.

I suspect you would both agree that

"under the financial pressure of a public corp ... what little actual journalism they do will slowly die off"

And when ad revenue dries up, the first thing to be shuttered will be that.

Yeah, it's pretty unfortunate but I've got mixed feelings as clearly the model is not terrible, and they're still funding investigative journalism.

Both sides of Buzzfeed deserve criticism.

I don’t get why people buy into this narrative. 5-10% of the content the BF organization puts out is respectable. Ok, it’s still 90% trash. The markets are treating it as such.

>some of buzzfeed is alright

well, I'm sure that some of dailymail, rt, breitbart, etc, is alright too. does it matter?

whatever that particular branch of that outlet is doing, it is owned by the same vile individuals as the rest of that conglomerate that sows division and discord for profit.

buzzfeed and its likes on both ends of the horseshoe deserve all the hate they get and more.

They were the first to pump out and up that Clinton paid for Steele Dossier / the dumb trump Pee pee tape thing. YEt they even noted it was not verified yet all left outlets picked it up and acted like it was nonfiction.

Anyone who believes that stuff (Hilary clinton pizza parlor pedo ring .. lmao to Hunter Biden narrative the right pushed lol) needs a life outside of for profit reality TV oops i mean for profit manipulated, biased media. There's zero objectivity with that garbage!

Think CNN might be trying to change it's course possibly with the firing of Coumo whose brother was probably forced out due to politics (Trump had it out for him). Not that I'd ever watch or read CNN or any of them again.

The Steele dossier was being circulated among officials in Washington and they were taking it into account when dealing with things like law enforcement investigations into Trump. That, in and of itself, makes it newsworthy and creates a public interest in knowing what's in it, regardless of whether its claims are true or not.

all of it's claims are true?

Did HIlary Clinton not fund it?

No left or right bias here ... only objectivity! Hbu?

Every news outlet excepting Buzzfeed disagreed with your philosophy of newsworthiness, and it led to years of political catastrophe and public opinion of journalism reaching its nadir.

Probably is too blinded by bias to think clearly and objectively.

Yet my comment is being downvoted so unintelligent bias is still ruling over otherwise intelligent people.

I'll acknowledge that this is a minority opinion, but it's not totally without support. E.g., Nate Silver agrees: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/should-rumors-like-the-...

I'm also skeptical of the claim that the Steele dossier had any major long-term consequences at all, but I suppose that's a difficult question to resolve.

Pardon me, but letting alone the notion that any reasonable person with the means to follow those stories would have cause to dismiss them, the Hunter Biden stories have hardly been addressed. Hard to be part of for-profit reality TV without being covered.

Its politics as usual making up whatever and that was covered on right wing for profit trash outlets. Just like now the right political media is pumping out the narrative of the VP being a horrible person. If you believe any of it ok that's you but time shows it's all fabricate political maneuvering so its all b.s.. Crap that i ignore and live life happily and far away from! Why waste time on made up crap? There's lots more in life to enjoy then plugging one self into for profit manipulated media machines where the viewer or reader can never truly verify the veracity of any of it. Only truth is the majority of it bias and for profit.

They were starting to cultivate the image of publishing serious investigative journalism, but I stopped paying attention after the Steele Dossier debacle.

I’d have to peruse the links on that page more carefully to determine whether or not the content is worthwhile, but it’s telling that the latest featured longform article is over a year old. Likely a sign of where their priorities lie.

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