Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> They are a serious journalism organisation

BuzzFeed is? I only ever see them publish silly top-ten lists and click-bait articles.

"BuzzFeed launches a new website for its real journalism": https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/18/buzzfeed-news/

"Buzzfeed News adds a Pulitzer winner and top Pentagon correspondent to its staff": http://www.niemanlab.org/reading/buzzfeed-news-adds-a-pulitz...

Seems like a really bizarre brand to re-use like that. BuzzFeed stands for everything that’s bad and manipulative in journalism in my experience. Like building a restaurant chain reusing your sewage company brand. Why did they do it?

Venture capitalists & NBCUniversal / Comcast have vaporized half a billion dollars on a low-quality click-bait service that is inevitably going bankrupt (or sold for pennies on the dollar of its former valuation). The small group within BuzzFeed that actually produces high quality journalism is the only serious value left in the entire company. That's why they kept it attached to the core brand. If they had separated it off, there's nothing left of the $500 million of VC and no future to the company. The high quality separated off unit would be worth a small fraction of the former BuzzFeed valuation. It'll probably be sold to Comcast for $50m a minute before it goes under.

That Pulitzer winner is Anthony Cormier, the author of the “bombshell” story Mueller said was false. Either the Pulitzeris not all it’s cracked up to be or Buzzfeed selects the worst - likely both.

> Mueller said was false.

I keep seeing people say this but all I've seen is Peter Carr say the Buzzfeed story was "inaccurate". Do you have a source or citation for Mueller saying it was false? Thanks!

edit: (assuming we're talking about the Cohen Congress story)

“Inaccurate” means false. Do you think Mueller would have made has first and only news comment on an article that was essentially correct but had minor errors? Do you think the NYTimes and WashPo are simply ignoring this “bombshell”?

Cognitive mistakes like this are a form of confirmation bias, sometimes called wishful thinking. You want this to be true, right?

> “Inaccurate” means false.

It may well do but we don't know that at the moment. Trump may not have explicitly told Cohen to lie to Congress, for example, but the intent and meaning were clear from his words. Saying "he told him to lie" is then inaccurate but not false. There's a hundred other scenarios where they come out and say "inaccurate" without meaning "false". We won't know until the full report is out.

Literally the reputational concern I’m addressing up top

Reply on news.ycombinator.com