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I don't know much about Axios, but I thought they tended towards impartial fact-based reporting, and I'm surprised at the emotionally charged language in this a

I don't know much about Axios, but I thought they tended towards impartial fact-based reporting, and I'm surprised at the emotionally charged language in this article > "chronicling the wiles and humiliation of Adam Neumann, WeWork's day-drinking co-founder, former CEO, and chief snake-oil salesman"

brewdad 5y ago
While the snake-oil salesman label is a bit too charged, the rest of the sentence is fact-based with just a bit of flourish.
- brink 5y ago
  Emotionally charged doesn't mean false.
  - starfallg 5y ago
    I don't understand where this recent obsession about using neutral language in reporting is coming from. Using neutral language doesn't mean unbiased. Very convincing yet very biased pieces can be written in the most neutral language.
    - fouric 5y ago
      Emotionally-charged language is another way to create bias. An un-biased article must at least be written in an emotionally neutral tone - necessary, but not sufficient.
      - benlivengood 5y ago
        Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? There's always a value judgement being made about what is important to report. That value judgement will correspond with emotions in most cases, so it's worthwhile to acknowledge that fact as well. It's fine to describe situations where people lose their lives as "tragedies", for example. It's possible to go overboard by projecting emotions onto the audience that they don't actually have.
        thefounder 5y ago
        I would rather like the media companies to report the facts than spend too much time on the emotional part. Same goes for the history books. I've become alergic to different parties trying to hijack my emotional state by telling me who to hate and who to feel sorry for when all I want to read are facts not "opinions", "breaking views" etc
        shock-value 5y ago
        > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? If they purport to be objective journalism (and not all articles need be that) then yes, definitely. Seems that Axios plays a little loose with these guidelines outside of politics (their main wheelhouse). I think it's probably a mistake, to the extent that they are interested in keeping their reputation for good journalism.
        mypalmike 5y ago
        I used to watch a TV news show from DW called European Journal, which I believe no longer exists. The presentation was incredibly neutral. They told the facts, they asked people involved to tell their stories, etc. It was beyond refreshing to hear reporters who were not trying to manipulate me emotionally. But apparently it was not entertaining to a wide enough audience keep the lights on.
        fouric 5y ago
        > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? Yes. Articles written in an emotionally charged way in order to influence their readers are a flavor of brainwashing - telling the reader what to think, or even worse, trying to influence them without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, the fact that an individual or organization is trying to emotionally manipulate you at all is a huge red flag. The best possible scenario is that they're doing it because they think that they know what's good for you better than you do, and after that it's a toss-up between "they want to make money" (ads) and "they want to control you" (authoritarians). Emotional manipulation is also a classic tool of tyrants, and is necessary in cases where suppression of the population through pure brute force isn't feasible. Yes, "There's always a value judgement being made about what is important to report." - but that's unavoidable, because reporters have limited resources. Adding in emotionally-charged (or straight-up manipulative) language makes the bias strictly worse. The fact that totally unbiased reporting is impossible is not an excuse to embrace more bias than is necessary. > It's fine to describe situations where people lose their lives as "tragedies", for example. I respectfully disagree, for the reason that news organizations actively pick-and-choose words like this that are emotionally charged and don't have precise meanings in order to slant their articles. While most events that a news organization would describe as a "tragedy" are indeed so, some of them are not. Moreover, even if that word isn't used, readers will understand when events are tragedies anyway - the number of people who weren't aware that a plane crash was a "tragedy" unless it was explicitly pointed out to them (and who were then convinced by the use of that word) is an incredibly tiny sliver of the population.
tyre 5y ago
I’m not sure what is biased about this. The book is about the wiles and humiliation of Adam Newman, who would day-drink and was a snake oil salesman. That’s why we talk about Adam Newman. It’s not conjecture that he’s projections were delusional. It doesn’t make the reporting any less objective because they are describing how a book portrays someone.
hintymad 5y ago
Even if there was humiliation, it was humiliation with a $400M+ payout to Adam Neumann. Softbank set up a really bad example in the industry: you can get away with a hefty payout even if you screw your investors and employees with deceit and corruption. For that, Masayoshi Son is a co-conspirator and I think he should not be trusted by anyone and deserve bankruptcy, if not criminal charges.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  SoftBank employs over 80,000 people. SoftBank’s investments don’t seem to rise to the level of corporate corruption where it seems reasonable to put the employees on the street.
  - hintymad 5y ago
    Fair point. My grudge is toward Masayoshi Son. Edited accordingly.
  - wussboy 5y ago
    How many employees does a corporation need before it can act unethically?
    - mastax 5y ago
      New unit: Enrons. 1 Enron is 29000 employees. As companies approach the 1 Enron mark their probability of corporate death penalty declines following a logistic curve.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    But at some point (likely when interest rates shift up and/or the market crashes and/or lending tightens), those 80,000 people are going to be out of a job when the whole thing implodes. And at that point, it's a solid argument that they all would have been better off if SoftBank's capital had instead been previously allocated to non-zombie / financial-engineering businesses.
  - malcolmgreaves 5y ago
fouric 5y ago
I was also a bit surprised at the language. I agree that Newman is indeed a "snake-oil salesman", but I don't think that that specific language is appropriate for a news organization. I recall reading their mission statement a few years ago and getting the impression that they were trying to be impartial and fact-based. However, all of the articles that I've read from them recently (~6 over the past year) have been similarly emotionally charged. Perhaps their vision has changed?
- wussboy 5y ago
  Emotionally charged gets more likes. It is the fundamental problem of social media. You cannot avoid it because you will lose in the competition for attention against an organization that embraces it.
danso 5y ago
Mike Allen is Axios’s co-founder and chief newsletter writer. I’m guessing his posts are more akin to editorials than reported articles.

brewdad 5y ago

While the snake-oil salesman label is a bit too charged, the rest of the sentence is fact-based with just a bit of flourish.

brink 5y ago
Emotionally charged doesn't mean false.
- starfallg 5y ago
  I don't understand where this recent obsession about using neutral language in reporting is coming from. Using neutral language doesn't mean unbiased. Very convincing yet very biased pieces can be written in the most neutral language.
  - fouric 5y ago
    Emotionally-charged language is another way to create bias. An un-biased article must at least be written in an emotionally neutral tone - necessary, but not sufficient.
    - benlivengood 5y ago
      Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? There's always a value judgement being made about what is important to report. That value judgement will correspond with emotions in most cases, so it's worthwhile to acknowledge that fact as well. It's fine to describe situations where people lose their lives as "tragedies", for example. It's possible to go overboard by projecting emotions onto the audience that they don't actually have.
      - thefounder 5y ago
        I would rather like the media companies to report the facts than spend too much time on the emotional part. Same goes for the history books. I've become alergic to different parties trying to hijack my emotional state by telling me who to hate and who to feel sorry for when all I want to read are facts not "opinions", "breaking views" etc
      - shock-value 5y ago
        > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? If they purport to be objective journalism (and not all articles need be that) then yes, definitely. Seems that Axios plays a little loose with these guidelines outside of politics (their main wheelhouse). I think it's probably a mistake, to the extent that they are interested in keeping their reputation for good journalism.
      - mypalmike 5y ago
        I used to watch a TV news show from DW called European Journal, which I believe no longer exists. The presentation was incredibly neutral. They told the facts, they asked people involved to tell their stories, etc. It was beyond refreshing to hear reporters who were not trying to manipulate me emotionally. But apparently it was not entertaining to a wide enough audience keep the lights on.
      - fouric 5y ago
        > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? Yes. Articles written in an emotionally charged way in order to influence their readers are a flavor of brainwashing - telling the reader what to think, or even worse, trying to influence them without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, the fact that an individual or organization is trying to emotionally manipulate you at all is a huge red flag. The best possible scenario is that they're doing it because they think that they know what's good for you better than you do, and after that it's a toss-up between "they want to make money" (ads) and "they want to control you" (authoritarians). Emotional manipulation is also a classic tool of tyrants, and is necessary in cases where suppression of the population through pure brute force isn't feasible. Yes, "There's always a value judgement being made about what is important to report." - but that's unavoidable, because reporters have limited resources. Adding in emotionally-charged (or straight-up manipulative) language makes the bias strictly worse. The fact that totally unbiased reporting is impossible is not an excuse to embrace more bias than is necessary. > It's fine to describe situations where people lose their lives as "tragedies", for example. I respectfully disagree, for the reason that news organizations actively pick-and-choose words like this that are emotionally charged and don't have precise meanings in order to slant their articles. While most events that a news organization would describe as a "tragedy" are indeed so, some of them are not. Moreover, even if that word isn't used, readers will understand when events are tragedies anyway - the number of people who weren't aware that a plane crash was a "tragedy" unless it was explicitly pointed out to them (and who were then convinced by the use of that word) is an incredibly tiny sliver of the population.

tyre 5y ago

I’m not sure what is biased about this. The book is about the wiles and humiliation of Adam Newman, who would day-drink and was a snake oil salesman. That’s why we talk about Adam Newman. It’s not conjecture that he’s projections were delusional. It doesn’t make the reporting any less objective because they are describing how a book portrays someone.

hintymad 5y ago

Even if there was humiliation, it was humiliation with a $400M+ payout to Adam Neumann. Softbank set up a really bad example in the industry: you can get away with a hefty payout even if you screw your investors and employees with deceit and corruption. For that, Masayoshi Son is a co-conspirator and I think he should not be trusted by anyone and deserve bankruptcy, if not criminal charges.

jdavis703 5y ago
SoftBank employs over 80,000 people. SoftBank’s investments don’t seem to rise to the level of corporate corruption where it seems reasonable to put the employees on the street.
- hintymad 5y ago
  Fair point. My grudge is toward Masayoshi Son. Edited accordingly.
- wussboy 5y ago
  How many employees does a corporation need before it can act unethically?
  - mastax 5y ago
    New unit: Enrons. 1 Enron is 29000 employees. As companies approach the 1 Enron mark their probability of corporate death penalty declines following a logistic curve.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  But at some point (likely when interest rates shift up and/or the market crashes and/or lending tightens), those 80,000 people are going to be out of a job when the whole thing implodes. And at that point, it's a solid argument that they all would have been better off if SoftBank's capital had instead been previously allocated to non-zombie / financial-engineering businesses.
- malcolmgreaves 5y ago

fouric 5y ago

I was also a bit surprised at the language. I agree that Newman is indeed a "snake-oil salesman", but I don't think that that specific language is appropriate for a news organization. I recall reading their mission statement a few years ago and getting the impression that they were trying to be impartial and fact-based. However, all of the articles that I've read from them recently (~6 over the past year) have been similarly emotionally charged. Perhaps their vision has changed?

wussboy 5y ago
Emotionally charged gets more likes. It is the fundamental problem of social media. You cannot avoid it because you will lose in the competition for attention against an organization that embraces it.

danso 5y ago

Mike Allen is Axios’s co-founder and chief newsletter writer. I’m guessing his posts are more akin to editorials than reported articles.