BuzzFeed denies deleting critical articles to appease advertisers
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But this latest incident is pretty disturbing...I would've figured that BuzzFeed's clout (and funding) was so high that annoying a couple of advertisers with articles was a cost of doing business that could easily be swallowed, rather than compromise their integrity.
But as the famous Watergate saying goes, it's not the crime, it's the coverup. Not only were the deletions done secretly, but when exposed, the excuses were so transparently lame. The post critical of Dove was deleted because it was a "hot take", and deleting it was necessary to get the point across to the writers? That's an editorial-style kerfluffle, one that could be explained through a memo, not _retracting the article_. Keep in mind that a retraction is traditionally done for very serious screwups, like the time Rolling Stone accused UVA of covering up a gang-rape but didn't interview anybody involved. Making a low-quality post should not be grounds for deletion.
And this became a lot worse when the Hasbro/Monopoly article was discovered...when the Dove post was deleted, BuzzFeed's editor said that was the first and only time such a deletion had been done...the Monopoly post was deleted a month or so ago. And the lame reason for that deletion was that the post was too opinionated, and that it too was a one-time-action.
Kind of strange that of the thousands of posts BuzzFeed makes in a single week, the only two that of such egregious quality that they were completely deleted (and done so in such a way as to be removed from the Internet Archive and Google Cache) had to do with two prominent advertisers.
I know publishing is a business, and all journalism institutions make various compromises/cutbacks for bottom-line reasons. But the cover-up here is more egregious than most.
>I researched the newspaper’s coverage of HSBC. I learnt that Harry Wilson, the admirable banking correspondent of the Telegraph, had published an online story about HSBC based on a report from a Hong Kong analyst who had claimed there was a ‘black hole’ in the HSBC accounts. This story was swiftly removed from the Telegraph website, even though there were no legal problems. When I asked HSBC whether the bank had complained about Wilson's article, or played any role in the decision to remove it, the bank declined to comment. Mr Wilson’s contemporaneous tweets referring to the story can be found here. The story itself, however, is no longer available on the website, as anybody trying to follow through the link can discover. Mr Wilson rather bravely raised this issue publicly at the ‘town hall meeting’ when Jason Seiken introduced himself to staff. He has since left the paper.
Most reputable papers wouldn't do this with a new piece though. Opinion pieces seem to get removed at times, mainly when there is a backlash and the paper feels that a column crossed the line from controversial clickbait into something that's drawing too much heat (e.g. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/14/observer-editor-john-mu... ).
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Now, worrying about the integrity of BuzzFeed strikes me as slightly hypocritical - I mean, it's yellow pages 2.0 at the end of the day - isn't it?
maybe myopic? misaimed?
maybe just stupid.
Check out this amazing article covering the writing of the AUMF after 9/11 http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...
Add a little bit of "Internet: Threat Or Menace?" bias from the people whose audience is skewing older faster than the general population and BuzzFeed is now terrible beyond words.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2014/09/05/tv...
And anyway, buzz feed's news articles are as serious other publishers. The presence of other silly stories isn't any worse than the Boston Globe having a comics page.
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/search?q=guardian&res...
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=exstudent
You know, if it's about transparency and ethics.
The only reason The Telegraph published that article is that their chief political commentator had just resigned over the papers failure to cover the HSBC tax story (among other things) and the Telegraph were engaging in shit-tier whataboutery to try and stop their readership collapsing. https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-...
>The coverage of HSBC in Britain's Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril.
The Telegraph is in the middle of a huge meltdown at the moment, and they are lashing out at everybody else. They also ran this particularly appalling story on their front page to try and detract from their own crisis: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/daily-telegraph-anonymou...
>A senior Daily Telegraph reporter wrote an anonymous front page story suggesting suicides at a rival newspaper may be connected to stress caused by commercial pressure – just days after the Telegraph itself faced allegations of blurring the lines between advertising and editorial.
I'm no fan of The Telegraph, and also think they published the piece because the Guardian revealed their own timidity in standing up to an advertiser (HSBC). But that doesn't mean the Telegraph piece about the Guardian is untrue. My own interpretation is that this kind of thing must be more common than we think when these publishers rely so heavily on advertising money. Of course it's not in their interest to be so open about it, so we probably hear little - except when they start flinging mud at each other.
suddenly disappeared.
If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation, I guess.
However, with White House now using buzzfeed as a medium link up with the younger generation, it's become a source of "information" (see below) to see what agenda Obama is peddling to the kids today.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/12/385867076/wat...