Want To Get Some Press? Just Blame Facebook For Destroying The Economy
from the so-easy-and-guaranteed-to-work! dept
The whole “blame Facebook for killing the economy” line seems guaranteed to get press these days as we’ve already had two totally different stories of “studies” coming out from biased parties, supposedly “blaming” Facebook for killing productivity. The stories all follow a pretty similar arc to all of the “personal surfing is killing productivity” reports that come out every few months from some company trying to sell internet filters. However, by adding the Facebook element, you’ve got a definite press hook that most can’t resist. Con von Hoffman writes in to let us know about the third example in the series, as some employment lawyer in the UK is claiming bogus “productivity” losses from Facebook. It’s the same old story, counting every minute spent on Facebook as “lost productivity” despite studies showing that taking personal surfing breaks tend to be good for employees, and they more than make it up in the work that they do. No matter, though, the story hook is too good for the press to ignore. As Con notes, none of the press reports on the topic bothered to check with anyone than the guy who’s trying to get publicity for his employment law practice, and none seemed to question his methodology.
Comments on “Want To Get Some Press? Just Blame Facebook For Destroying The Economy”
Does this mean we can now blame Facebook for killing journalists’ research abilities?
The press is in a sorry state these days. Investigation and questioning are no longer the status quo. It used to be that “reporting” meant turning things over so that facts could be reported, now it seems in many cases to be more like a pulpit anybody can use to push their agenda, be it political or advertising.
Blaming Facebook For Destroying The Economy
I think this is not right. Facebook never forces any of those workers to hang out at its site when they should be working in their offices, so Facebook is blameless.