Warning: Some posts on this platform may contain adult material intended for mature audiences only. Viewer discretion is advised. By clicking ‘Continue’, you confirm that you are 18 years or older and consent to viewing explicit content.
This year, like every year, Amazon workers’ attempts to draw attention to their exploitative conditions were largely drowned out by hundreds of fawning PR press releases thinly disguised as articles about how “consumers” could “take advantage” of “amazing deals” offered by Amazon on “Prime Day.”
The media is broken. There’s an expectation for underpaid writers to keep pumping out engaging stories to fuel the 24 hour news cycle and generate advertising revenue, much like the expectation on Amazon workers to hit excessive package quota. The result is that every company’s PR person just has to email news outlets a “media release” and some jourmalist will lift it nearly word for word to make their article count for the month. Just copying and pasting chunks out of literal intentional advertising and passing it off as a genuine investigation.
And they don’t have to tell you how much of each article is directly from those companies either.
Any time you see a vaguely positive or neutral news item about a person or company, you should assume it is written entirely by that person or company. Especially when the article title refuses to inform you about the article’s content. Things like “People can’t stop taking about this viral new product that only costs $10 at RetailerName!” And “PersonName’s shock transformation revealed”.
The media is broken. There’s an expectation for underpaid writers to keep pumping out engaging stories to fuel the 24 hour news cycle and generate advertising revenue, much like the expectation on Amazon workers to hit excessive package quota. The result is that every company’s PR person just has to email news outlets a “media release” and some jourmalist will lift it nearly word for word to make their article count for the month. Just copying and pasting chunks out of literal intentional advertising and passing it off as a genuine investigation.
And they don’t have to tell you how much of each article is directly from those companies either.
Any time you see a vaguely positive or neutral news item about a person or company, you should assume it is written entirely by that person or company. Especially when the article title refuses to inform you about the article’s content. Things like “People can’t stop taking about this viral new product that only costs $10 at RetailerName!” And “PersonName’s shock transformation revealed”.