5 ms·

Amazon.com: How the Online Giant Hoodwinks the Press

15 points by ojbyrne 18y ago

tl 18y ago
I don't see any hoodwinking going on here. I do see a vapid piece about the same press that generally fails on fact-checking and not being a PR mouthpiece doing what they normally do.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  I kind of agree. It sort of highlights the conflict between the vapidity of the online press/blogosphere and the vapidity of the offline/traditional press. I just posted it because it said what I thought was obvious about yesterday's feel-good Amazon story.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkzig 18y ago
  Agreed. It's a sad commentary on what passes for journalism these days. Sounds provacative? Run with it. Facts? Who needs 'em. We've got ads to sell. Sad.
sabat 18y ago
Amazon PR learned a lot from the Bush administration (K.R.) about how to fool them. State things as though they're established facts. Typical lazy editors won't insist that the facts are checked.
- jerf 18y ago
  That's not "learned from the Bush administration", that's PR 101. Go read pg's essay on PR, which is only news because it's being explained to people not in the PR industry, not because it was actually new information: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html The press hasn't been in the business of checking facts for at least two decades, and it just gets worse and worse.
  - sabat 18y ago
    Please, don't try to tell me that KR didn't take it to new heights (and new levels of cynicism).
mattmcknight 18y ago
This article is ridiculous. No one is hoodwinking anyone. Amazon is choosing what to report on very carefully here. They don't want to actually pre-announce Q4 financials. In any case, from a technical and operations perspective it is very interesting to know what capacity they are capable of. (Especially given the number of e-commerce sites that had significant downtime this year.)
AndrewWarner 18y ago
This is by I think we need to be careful when we're studying success. Much of what people claim is PR.
sireat 18y ago
In related news, suit is back this year... Amazon's PR here is not particularly insidious, what you see/read in Mass Media is PR roughly 80 percent of the time (some MM such as The Economist excepted).
TomOfTTB 18y ago
I’m going to defend this article. I do think the headline has too much hyperbole but the point he makes is a good one: Amazon’s PR department made a claim and papers just ran with that claim sight unseen. What makes this a bigger issue than simple fact checking is that the claim is coming from Amazon’s PR department which has every reason to exaggerate and the claim is unverifiable by the media. So while a normal fact checking error involves the press not checking out what they believe to be true this situation involves the press publishing something that is very likely false and which we know they couldn’t check. So while it seems like an attack on Amazon (which would be out of line since their PR is just doing what they’re supposed to) it’s really an attack on sloppy journalism.

15 points by ojbyrne 18y ago

tl 18y ago

I don't see any hoodwinking going on here. I do see a vapid piece about the same press that generally fails on fact-checking and not being a PR mouthpiece doing what they normally do.

ojbyrne 18y ago
I kind of agree. It sort of highlights the conflict between the vapidity of the online press/blogosphere and the vapidity of the offline/traditional press. I just posted it because it said what I thought was obvious about yesterday's feel-good Amazon story.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
thinkzig 18y ago
Agreed. It's a sad commentary on what passes for journalism these days. Sounds provacative? Run with it. Facts? Who needs 'em. We've got ads to sell. Sad.

sabat 18y ago

Amazon PR learned a lot from the Bush administration (K.R.) about how to fool them. State things as though they're established facts. Typical lazy editors won't insist that the facts are checked.

jerf 18y ago
That's not "learned from the Bush administration", that's PR 101. Go read pg's essay on PR, which is only news because it's being explained to people not in the PR industry, not because it was actually new information: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html The press hasn't been in the business of checking facts for at least two decades, and it just gets worse and worse.
- sabat 18y ago
  Please, don't try to tell me that KR didn't take it to new heights (and new levels of cynicism).

mattmcknight 18y ago

This article is ridiculous. No one is hoodwinking anyone. Amazon is choosing what to report on very carefully here. They don't want to actually pre-announce Q4 financials. In any case, from a technical and operations perspective it is very interesting to know what capacity they are capable of. (Especially given the number of e-commerce sites that had significant downtime this year.)

AndrewWarner 18y ago

This is by I think we need to be careful when we're studying success. Much of what people claim is PR.

sireat 18y ago

In related news, suit is back this year... Amazon's PR here is not particularly insidious, what you see/read in Mass Media is PR roughly 80 percent of the time (some MM such as The Economist excepted).

TomOfTTB 18y ago

I’m going to defend this article. I do think the headline has too much hyperbole but the point he makes is a good one: Amazon’s PR department made a claim and papers just ran with that claim sight unseen. What makes this a bigger issue than simple fact checking is that the claim is coming from Amazon’s PR department which has every reason to exaggerate and the claim is unverifiable by the media. So while a normal fact checking error involves the press not checking out what they believe to be true this situation involves the press publishing something that is very likely false and which we know they couldn’t check. So while it seems like an attack on Amazon (which would be out of line since their PR is just doing what they’re supposed to) it’s really an attack on sloppy journalism.