1. Perlroth et al publish a story in the NYT that arguably reflects poorly on Sandberg.

2. Facebook's PR firm contacts the NYT post-publication requesting that changes be made to the story.

3. Within a few hours the story is edited in a way that arguably is less negative toward Sandberg.

Given just this information, is it fair to claim that 2 caused 3? You (with your "conspiracy theory" level of attention to detail and logic) say "no"; mannykannot says "yes". While logically you would seem to be right, let's see how strong we can make the argument that this series of events actually does show causation. How about this:

1) Facebook is willing to pay an expensive PR firm to reach out to the NYT with the goal of changing the coverage. At the least, I think we can say that Facebook (and probably their expensive PR firm) believe that such edit requests produce results. Do you think they are wasting their money? If so, why should we trust an idealistic academic on this rather than a self-interested profit-driven firm willing?

2) If the authors know that there is pushback from Facebook on the story, they will edit the story differently than if there was no pushback. The only question is how big the difference is. Maybe it only prevents them from adding further negativity, or maybe it makes them choose slightly more defensible word choices. They might eventually redirect their efforts in a different piece, but do you really believe that knowledge of pushback will have truly zero effect on their editorial choices? And we've established that it's a non-zero influence, aren't we (like Churchill) just haggling about the price?

3) In addition to having journalistic ideals, the NYT is also a business who needs to be concerned about their reputation as a trustworthy news source. Facebook is one of very few companies influential enough to make or break the NYT's reputation. Thus when Facebook reaches out to the business side of the NYT suggesting that greater consideration be given to their side of the story, it would be prudent for the NYT to do so, or at least to give Facebook the impression that they are doing so. While this doesn't directly explain any individual edit, it might explain a general trajectory whereby edits are generally made in a direction favorable to Facebook. Do you deny that these forces exist?

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888

> FB PR gave us a statement from Stamos after the first post in which he described the dynamic "as productive." We appended that to our story, while also laying out disagreements.

I'm assuming this was the graf that was added:

> Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”

The other reporter, Sheera Frenkel, adds the specifics that Facebook PR "made no such request" about removing references to Sandberg:

https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296

-----

So what's your rationale, given the complete absence of evidence, such as an inside source -- to distrust the NYT reporters out of hand? Why do you think the benefit of the doubt should be given to the reporter from Law&Crime, who is only making allegations? He's more knowledgeable and trustworthy than the actual reporters who investigated and published this story in the first place?

Maybe it's not clear enough that the Stamos vs. Sandberg story was the result of reporter effort; Stamos's departure (nevermind the reasons and the controversies) was not an official announcement. So I admit my bias that it's hard to believe why we should suspect the NYT reporters of censoring their own story when it's entirely their fault that the story even exists?

As you can guess from my phrasing, I don't absolutely distrust them, and merely suggest that their statements should be assessed with an awareness of their self-interest. I presume that the authors believe that they did not make edits in response to threats from Facebook, although I'd expect them to say the same even if they did feel pressured. But in the same way that the "anthropic principle" is outside formal logic but sometimes produces interesting insights, I think it's worth considering what conclusions can be drawn from the fact that these authors remain gainfully employed by the New York Times.

it's hard to believe why we should suspect the NYT reporters of censoring their own story when it's entirely their fault that the story even exists?

I agree, but censoring is not absolute, not everyone within the paper has the same goals, and no individual has just a single goal. There are tensions pulling the journalists in multiple directions, and Facebook's PR firm is one of these tensions. Perhaps getting a story out with minor modifications satisfies enough of the goals of the parties involved. Would you concede that "zero impact" from corporate criticism is probably an unachievable ideal, and that Facebook's pushback here might have had at least a tiny influence in the way the story evolved (and will continue to evolve)?

More generally, I'm dubious that a for-profit press can ever please all stakeholders. Are you familiar with this criticism of the NYT from a couple years ago: "An obituary of The New York Times" [https://medium.com/@johannes.wahlstrom/an-obituary-of-the-ne...]. I thought it did a good job of pointing to some previous examples of the imperfect wall between business and journalistic goals.

I'm not asking us to discern with extreme acuity the integrity and honesty of these NYT journalists. I'm limiting it to the claims that have been made against them, their responses, and the evidence available. Trying to draw conclusions about their scope and length of gainful employment and what that says about them is all an unnecessary tangent.

I absolutely agree that censorship (and racism, and hate, and everything not binary) is not an absolute. And that journalists are influenced by many biases, overt and hidden. In fact, the NYT journalists in question could be compromised if they are avid FB users and have many fond memories.

But why is that the topic of debate? Law&crime has made a specific assertion about how FB interacted with NYT reporters about a specific situation -- this negative FB story. I don't have to argue about whether FB's pushback had "zero impact" because I don't have to agree or disagree. Those small factors may push this question one way or another.

But before considering those minute details, and tackling the ongoing issue of the trustworthiness of corporate media and the presence of harmful incentives, we have to agree on some easily observable facts, regarding a well-defined question.

In other words, I don't think I have a lot to disagree with you. But if I have to convince you about the unified theory of journalism and business, just in arguing about whether the OP is full of shit, I don't think I can win that :)

Depends on which OP you mean. I don't think mannykannot made a strong argument here, but I was surprised by this. I seem to recall upvoting him on numerous previous occasions for comments I liked, and that I thought were logically sound. I was trying to figure out whether there was stronger argument hiding underneath his (at least superficially) logically flawed one.

If by OP you mean the author of the blog post on Law and Crime, yeah, I agree it seemed irredeemably awful. I'm willing to believe that it's a low quality hit piece for clicks and not worth considering more closely. Are they thought to be a brand that normally has higher standards? My expectations for mannykannot (a name I recognize on HN) are significantly higher than for an unfamiliar linked blog.

But why is that the topic of debate?

The actual debate of interest for me is why you and mannykannot seem to disagree so completely here, and why it was so difficult for the two of you to even make sense of each others' arguments. From the outside, it looked like both of you were arguing in good faith, but getting nowhere. Logically, I'm mostly with you, but while I find your argument compelling, others apparently do not. I'm interested in understanding the underlying cause of this.

The disagreement between me and mannykannot has to do with our fundamental assumptions. He believes that the OP's allegation -- that Facebook PR contacted the NYT, and the NYT afterwards edited its story -- is a sound premise. My argument (among many) is that the OP has provided no evidence for assuming that premise.

Not only did the NYT reporter explain what FBPR told her (they gave her an official statement to be associated with Stamos), they've denied that FBPR pressured them to do anything else. FB PR certainly hasn't said anything. I know that this is what we should expect to be the case if NYT and FB were in cahoots, but in these situations, the reporter making such an allegation has done the investigative reporting to find sources who can make the claim (NYT's story on Facebook is very dependent on anonymous sources).

So from my perspective, there is no reason to think that FB PR visit and NYT story update/edit have a causal relationship. I think mannykannot think I doth protest too much (which is fair!) and that my rationalizations and evidence is no more valid than what a conspiracy theorist would be doing.

That's fine, HN isn't about winning debates :)

While correlation alone does not automatically imply causation, causes result in correlation. I have noticed an uptick recently of invalid uses of the 'correlation is not causation' statement, as if it were a conclusive rebuttal, in situations where the correlation was, in fact, a consequence of the cause, and this seems to be the case here.

The rest of your argument rests on a number of assumptions about which specific people initiated actions, their motives, and that these specific people were each adopting for themselves a single, unchanging, rational and consistent policy -- so much so that the phrase quoted above must have been a fabrication. To me, that seems to require that a lot of the uncertain issues all line up in a particular direction (to be correlated, if you will), and the episode is more parsimoniously explained by the NYT (perhaps in the persons of a junior editor and PR staffer) initially making a decision that the larger organization realized was a mistake, but which then compounded the problem by attempting to gloss over the initial response. The good news, as your references indicate, is that the NYT's action seems to have been a temporary aberration.

> "Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published"

You think it's clear that the author is intending to state a casual relationship. Great. So my point is that the author is obliged to prove how he knows this is a causal relationship.

You can re-read his post all the way up and down, he provides no evidence. Meanwhile, Perlroth has explained [0] why she was in contact with FB's PR people -- because they wanted to give her Stamos's formal statement. This statement is quoted in Perlroth's story.

So we're still back at square one, starting with the author's hypothesis that FB's contact with NYT is related to the NYT's edit/update of their article. You're free to assume without evidence that it is more than a correlation, just as I'm free to take up skepticism. In a court case, if the NYT thought it'd be a good idea to sue for defamation, I really wonder what the L&C author would use as evidence. NYT, at least, will have the messages/emails between its reporters and FB.

[0] https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888