4 ms·

It seems like a brand issue for Reuters. The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigativ

It seems like a brand issue for Reuters. The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't, but they might just assume Reuters is no different than some other news site that just reprints press releases wholesale in articles (there are legion). They are teens after all, saying something "is from Reuters" might be meaningless to them in the same way "it came over the wire" would be to them. I wonder if it would be much more stark if you picked Coca Cola vs some well known investigative youtuber. They would probably pick the youtuber much more, I assume.

mschuster91 2y ago
> The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't Yeah, the thing is that there used to be far less outlets back in the day which you'd come into contact with - you had your local newspaper, radio and TV station and the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Fox or whatever on the national stage. That's it. Anything not on that list at least had some serious money backing it and was thus credible by assumption. These days, the local news have all gone down the drain and got replaced by an army of bloggers, some with actual blogs, some with Medium/Substack and some just doing shit on Twitter/Instagram. National news got increasingly partisan. And on top of that comes an even larger army of influencers of all kinds - game streamers, sometimes porn models pivoting their career, corporate shills, enemy propagandists... It's easy for us old guard to at least roughly size the credibility of an outlet. But the young ones? They grew up in a world where the "household names" factually didn't matter.
notahacker 2y ago
Assuming the source was an aggregator that at worst would simply be reproducing Coca Cola's greenwashing PR was a less reliable source than Coca Cola's greenwashing PR would seem like a pretty bad heuristic... Granted, there are also conspiracy theory websites likely to be less reliable than Coca Cola about Coca Cola, and activist websites whose reliability on the subject of Coca Cola varies from considerably more to considerably less reliable than Coca Coca's own press team, but I don't see any particular reason why teens would assume Reuters was one of those, even if they didn't know what Reuters was. Particularly not if they were showed the article. Sure, there are other ways you can make it make sense like if you substituted "reliable source of Coca Cola's opinion" into the text. But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. Just like similarly large proportions believe that Google's sponsored ads are the most popular or relevant results or that something labelled "Commentary" isn't an opinion...
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  > But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. This would track in the same way with how the very concept of "selling out" doesn't seem like a big thing for young people anymore. Working with any company for money, or parroting what they say, seems to be pretty popular. Influencer roles have made the wholesale commodification of ones life popular, even earnestly desired. That would seem to promote an atmosphere and general sense of going along with whatever a company says in the same way a lifelong employee might feel compelled to "toe the company line".

mschuster91 2y ago

> The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't Yeah, the thing is that there used to be far less outlets back in the day which you'd come into contact with - you had your local newspaper, radio and TV station and the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Fox or whatever on the national stage. That's it. Anything not on that list at least had some serious money backing it and was thus credible by assumption. These days, the local news have all gone down the drain and got replaced by an army of bloggers, some with actual blogs, some with Medium/Substack and some just doing shit on Twitter/Instagram. National news got increasingly partisan. And on top of that comes an even larger army of influencers of all kinds - game streamers, sometimes porn models pivoting their career, corporate shills, enemy propagandists... It's easy for us old guard to at least roughly size the credibility of an outlet. But the young ones? They grew up in a world where the "household names" factually didn't matter.

notahacker 2y ago

Assuming the source was an aggregator that at worst would simply be reproducing Coca Cola's greenwashing PR was a less reliable source than Coca Cola's greenwashing PR would seem like a pretty bad heuristic... Granted, there are also conspiracy theory websites likely to be less reliable than Coca Cola about Coca Cola, and activist websites whose reliability on the subject of Coca Cola varies from considerably more to considerably less reliable than Coca Coca's own press team, but I don't see any particular reason why teens would assume Reuters was one of those, even if they didn't know what Reuters was. Particularly not if they were showed the article. Sure, there are other ways you can make it make sense like if you substituted "reliable source of Coca Cola's opinion" into the text. But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. Just like similarly large proportions believe that Google's sponsored ads are the most popular or relevant results or that something labelled "Commentary" isn't an opinion...

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
> But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. This would track in the same way with how the very concept of "selling out" doesn't seem like a big thing for young people anymore. Working with any company for money, or parroting what they say, seems to be pretty popular. Influencer roles have made the wholesale commodification of ones life popular, even earnestly desired. That would seem to promote an atmosphere and general sense of going along with whatever a company says in the same way a lifelong employee might feel compelled to "toe the company line".