For f... sake, newspapers. You seriously need to start thinking about what impact your reporting has on the public.
Take this headline. Sounds pretty bad, right?
So what impact will this have when people see this? Well, it's obvious. You are fueling the anti-vaxxers. Right?!
Well, then you read the article, and it says this:
And then at the bottom of the article, it says this:
And then in another article, we can read this:
And then in a fourth article, when a newspaper finally waited to publish this story until they actually had some real information, we can read that this person wasn't given the vaccine at all.
So, I ask you again, newspapers. What impact did your headline have? You very strongly indicated that this death was linked to the vaccine. But in your story, you tell people that no such link exist.
But you also know that most people will only see the headline.
This is the kind of shenanigans I see in the press every day. Forget about fake news on Facebook, this is way worse because we have a massive audience and people think we are a reliable source.
But then we do this.
As newspapers, we have a higher level of responsibility.
We are the place people can turn to for reliable and trustworthy information, a role that is protected by the "freedom of the press".
But with this power comes great responsibility... which we fail to live up to.
As a media analyst, I'm so frustrated by this. Every day I see examples like this where we violate the most basic ethical standards of journalism and journalistic responsibility. And we are doing it during a worldwide pandemic, thus undermining efforts to stop this virus.
I can guarantee you that more people will refuse to be vaccinated once the trials are over because of articles like these.
We did this in the media. We are causing direct harm to society.
It has to stop!
Seriously. Stop it!
And now news sites are posting these headlines on social channels.
Seriously newspapers. Give me one reason why Twitter shouldn't block this. This headline is directly misleading and harming public health.
For possible reason should this be allowed to be shared on Twitter?
If it was a celebrity who did something like this, your own journalists would be all over it, calling on the social channels to stop it.
It's infuriating. This is violating everything journalism is supposed to stand for.
No they are not. If they were actually important to you, you would not show us this. GDPR came into effect on May 28, 2018 ... so it's pretty clear that this is not a priority for you at all.
Note to US publishers. I can understand why, as a local publisher in the US, that you don't want to deal with the cost and complication of implementing European legislation for an audience that is outside your market. I get that.
But then just say that. Don't lie to me.
What seriously annoys me as a media analyst is when publishers behave dishonestly. You say you care about my privacy, but you are asking me to give it up. That's not caring.
You say I'm important to you, but your actions say otherwise.
One thing I hate is how publishers try to twist GDPR into meaning something different, when the actual law is extremely clear.
Here is how 'consent' is defined.
So no, you cannot say: "By continuing to use our site you will automatically consent." That is simply not a thing.
It's the same about controllers vs processors. It's the data controller that people give consent to, and the processors act on behalf of that controller. What this means is that no processor can ever claim to have the right to do something on another site without a new consent.
If you give your consent to tracking on one newspaper to include FB tracking, then FB cannot claim to have the right to track someone on another site, arguing that you already gave your consent once. People didn't give their consent to FB. They gave it to the newspaper.
BTW: Fun side note: Whenever you do A/B testing, make sure you also do a A/A testing to see if the effect is actually real.
Let me explain:
One of the big flaws of an A/B testing is that it may not tell you what it think it tells you. Instead, the result you see might be entirely depended on other factors.
For instance, imagine you do a A/B test like this. Clearly 'option A' performed a lot better .. right?
One thing I have called for repeatedly this year is for newspapers to think more about 'cause and effect'. Meaning if you report something in one way, what bad effects might that cause?
[thread]
One example is the R number used to identify whether infections are rising or not.
R > 1: The situation is getting worse
R = 1: The situation is stable
R < 1: The situation is getting better
What's wrong with this, you ask? Well, the problem is when R = 1.
This is the situation we currently have here in Denmark. After a period of massive increase (R > 1), we have now ended up with a similar level of new infections per day.
One thing I think we need to stop doing as the press is to approach every story from an adversarial perspective.
Think about this pandemic. The 'enemy' is the virus, and the public, the authorities, the health experts, and also the press ... we are all on the same side.
1/4
But in the press, our journalistic focus has often made everyone the enemy of everyone else. So whenever one group says something, you immediately go out and interview someone who can contradict them.
This is really not helpful.
And this is true for most stories. Think about climate change and how we have spent ten years focusing on how to argue about it.
I came across a site today that was basically taking every one of my Plus articles and embedding them into their own site.
That just won't fly... so fix implemented.
BTW: The way this is done is to add this header to your site.
- add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
This tells the browser that the page can only be loaded directly and not via something on another person's site.
BTW: The reason why I discovered this was because Google had started ranking their site higher than mine.
I mean seriously Google. Why are you ranking a site that is merely embedding the content higher than the original site where the content came from?!?!?