By Emily Williams
“Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”
That was the quote shared round the Internet in August 2015, when the New York Times published a scathing story taking down retail giant Amazon for its hyper-competitive corporate culture and unfair treatment of its employees. The story garnered massive reaction at the time of publication, but has since been under scrutiny for what some have called sensationalism and biased reporting.
A recent response from the company published on blog publisher Medium brought the story back into public debate regarding the ethics of The Times’ reporting.
The article used sensational language as a method of framing. The authors evoked a negative image of the company culture through phrases like, “the guidelines conjure an empire of elite workers,” and “they must come armed with paper trails to defend the wrongfully accused and incriminate members of competing groups.” These phrases demonstrate the authors clearly had a point of view they were trying to further, accurate or not, and their use of such descriptions subtly communicates a biased opinion to readers.
One of the main ethical problems with this article was the fact that a majority of the evidence comes from anecdotes from unidentified sources. The most powerful section features testimonials from people who said they left the company for having children, dealing with family illness, and not checking emails on vacation; however, none of these sources is identified and no fact-based proof is provided.
Whether or not these stories are accurate, the most ethical way to present a story as controversial as this one is to ground you assertions in facts and data. The use of too many anonymous sources can make the reader doubt the story.
Another weak point in The Times’ reporting was that they failed to provide context. They describe the demanding and competitive work environment at Amazon, but don’t provide counterpoints by describing the work environment at other similar tech companies. Perhaps Amazon is the most intense of all its competitors, but the reader isn’t given the opportunity to make that comparison because only Amazon is discussed. Of course Amazon’s environment seems extreme when it is presented alone, but many other companies could be doing similar things.
In a post on Linkedin, current Amazon Head of Infrastructure Development Nick Ciubotariu wrote a point-by-point rebuttal to the article, saying the evidence and interviews they presented did not reflect the current state of the company.
“The NYT article is so blatantly incorrect, and additionally, purposefully designed to make past data reflect current reality at a company that has done quite a bit to change its ways and continues to work hard to do so,” he wrote.
On Monday October 20, 2015, Jay Carney, Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon, wrote a response on Medium blasting The Times for not fact checking their employee interviews with the company. Carney stated that ex-employee Bo Olsen, who told the reporters he witnessed his fellow employees crying at work, resigned from the company after he admitted to defrauding vendors and falsifying business records.
“We were in regular communication with (co-author Jodi) Kantor from February through the publication date in mid-August,” Carney wrote. “And yet somehow she never found the time, or inclination, to ask us about the credibility of a named source whose vivid quote would serve as a lynchpin for the entire piece.”
Regardless of whether or not Olsen’s story was true, the circumstances of his termination are an important part of the fact checking process. Quotes from disgruntled ex-employees are going to be biased by nature and will not necessarily reflect the overall culture of a company. Not disclosing this information in the article could lead the reader to believe that this is representative, rather than an extreme situation.
Shortly after Carney’s post, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Banquet posted his own rebuttal on Medium, arguing that their reporting was backed up by hundreds of interviews with current and former employees, some of whom were reluctant to give their names because their current companies do business with Amazon. Banquet provided explanations for the research that went into several of the employee stories. While Banquet’s response does rebuke many of the claims Carney was concerned about, it does not account for the lack of hard data evidence, or the lack or context within the tech community.
Was Amazon unfairly targeted by The New York Times in a clearly slanted story that ignored the facts and provided unfounded anecdotal evidence? Is Amazon truly the hellish, inhumane work environment The Times describes? The answer most likely lies somewhere in the middle; however, The Times’ biased reporting and anecdotal evidence is cause for ethical concern and does not represent the best journalistic practices.