Two giants are at war with each other. Who will survive the damage?
According to Byers Market, Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders are upset, to say the least, with the New York Times coverage of their company. Over the past year, the Times has slammed Facebook for a myriad of perceived issues, including data, privacy, conservative executive Joel Kaplan, Sheryl Sandberg’s relationship with Definers One and Soros opposition research, and Russian accounts’ engagement during election years.
Facebook believes that reporters at the Times are “gunning for a Pulitzer Prize” for its research on the tech giant. When asked, Times executive editor Dean Baquet said that Facebook was “a big company with unusual power that finds itself in the middle of some of the largest issues of the day -- privacy and political meddling.”
The New York Times has published some personal attacks on Facebook, including a piece called, “How to Delete Facebook and Instagram From Your Life Forever.” Byers writes, “The New York Times is the vanguard of a new age of tech journalism in which reporters are taking a more aggressive and adversarial stance toward Silicon Valley and its leaders.”
Facebook argues that the Times purchased a “sponsored post” that promoted “a step by step guide to breaking up with Facebook and Instagram.” The Times responded that the sponsored ad was not connected to the investigations into Facebook.
The Times barely covered conservative censorship on Facebook, however. Only three stories about someone being banned or censored from the platform were published in the Times in 2018. Meanwhile, 100 stories about Facebook’s data leaks, Russian interference, and Definers One and Soros were published at the Times in the same time-span.
