Facebook Forces NYT to Quietly Delete Unflattering Reference to Sheryl Sandberg

https://lawandcrime.com/exclusive/facebook-forces-nyt-to-quietly-delete-unflattering-reference-to-sheryl-sandberg-in-story-about-russian-trolls/

by uptown • 8 years ago

305 73 8 years ago

lawandcrime.com

gervase• 8 years ago

Is there any evidence that this change was the result of external pressure from Facebook, rather than as the result of internal NYT editing?

Articles frequently change in content, titles, and so on after publication, after all - that's why HN has to update titles so frequently.

Edit: Whoops, missed it the first read-through. Looks like the change was confirmed by the original reporter to be as the result of a request from the Facebook PR team.

adambyrtek• 8 years ago

Respectable sites usually include a list of corrections and changes made to an article after publication.

When it comes to submission titles, HN has a tendency to change them for no obvious reason even if the original title hasn't changed.

masonic• 8 years ago

  Respectable sites usually include a list of corrections and changes made to an article after publication

Respectable sources properly fact-check before publishing in the first place.

Generally, most people who read an erroneous original will never see the corrected version.

tptacek2• 8 years ago

NYT stories routinely change, sometimes substantially, between online and print versions, without corrections.

There used to be a site that tracked this.

snowwrestler• 8 years ago

Your edit is wrong; the NY Times reporter only confirmed the chronology, i.e. that the change happened at a later time than the contact from Facebook PR. She did not confirm that the change was a "result of a request from the Facebook PR team"; in fact she vehemently denied it on Twitter.

The story in this blog post is bullshit; it's made up.

I was the NYT reporter who was in contact w/Facebook over our Stamos story yesterday. We didn't remove any references to Sandberg at Facebook's request. (For the record, Facebook made no such request). If anything we added MORE detail to the story between the 1st and 2nd versions

https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296

EDIT to clarify: Nicole Perlroth is the reporter mentioned by name in the blog post who confirmed the chronology. Sheera Frenkel was another reporter on the same NYT byline who tweeted the above. Here's a tweet from Perlroth too:

Echoing Sheera here. @colinkalmbacher needs to correct his blog post to reflect that it is inaccurate, even his attempt at our name spellings. He should also address why he chose to ignore our responses, which contradicted everything he wrote.

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976241288411430912

danso17• 8 years ago

Looks like the change was confirmed by the original reporter to be as the result of a request from the Facebook PR team.

As snowwrestler pointed out, you are wrong in the most exact way. The OP article did not provide evidence or confirmation that Facebook PR team made this request, or that NYT made an editorial change because of FBPR. The OP says that it never got comment from Facebook PR. Meanwhile, the NYT reporters have outright denied that FBPR had any influence:

https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976159345195941888

The second tweet is probably more interesting. The reporter says that she talked to FB PR, because it was how FBPR wanted to deliver a formal statement re: Stamos. This is common practice, because of how anal/tightly wound companies are in wanting to control the official message is. And reporters have discretion of how to interpret or what to include from the PR message (the NYT apparently excerpted just, "as productive").

There is literally no evidence offered to support collusion between FB and NYT. There are no witnesses or whistleblowers, not even anonymous ones, with any claims. And everyone obviously involved (NYT and FB) has outright denied it.

The headline for this story is absolute trash -- because the story doesn't even establish that Facebook even talked to NYT about changing its story, nevermind forcing the New York Times to censor itself. Under HN guidelines it should be changed to a much weaker assertion but I can't imagine how to water it down without rendering it pointless.

fnayr3• 8 years ago

Where's Zuckerberg in all of this? It's strange with all the controversies hitting and the stock crash that he hasn't made any sort of public statement (unless I missed it?).

justboxing• 8 years ago

He's been super busy dumping a whole lot of his Facebook Shares before the Sh*t hit the fan.[1][2]

Sources:

[1] Zuckerberg has sold more Facebook stock in the last 3 months than any insider at any other company => https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/zuckerbergs-facebook-stock-s...

[2] Zuckerberg saved tens of millions of dollars by selling Facebook stock ahead of Monday’s decline: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zuckerberg-saved-tens-of-m...

fnayr3• 8 years ago

I have seen that. It doesn't look good for him no doubt. But that equates to less than a billion right? The stock drop alone in the past few days cost him much more than that ($5 billion from one article I read).

So given that he's probably not an idiot, it looks really bad to sell if he thinks it's going to drop, and the money he made from selling is far outweighed by the drop from the controversies, it doesn't seem likely to me that it was because "he knew it was going to drop."

I don't like the guy but my feeling is it was unlucky timing.

nopriorarrests• 8 years ago

Such sales are usually coordinated with SEC well in advance. You submit your filing to SEC and sell accordingly during next 365 or 180 days (not sure about timeline, but definitely not a week).

Lightbody• 8 years ago

I'm super frustrated with Facebook, but this is conspiracy theory territory. Place the anger in the right direction.

Those trades were part of his 10b5-1, a scheduled trading plan set in place at a minimum 3 months ahead of time and typically extends out 12+ months. Trades in the plan are protected from insider trading accusations and considered an "affirmative defense" [1].

While you can trade shares outside your 10b5-1 plan, those trades aren't protected from insider trading accusations.

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/03/24/a-guide-to-rule-1...

threeseed4• 8 years ago

As other's have mentioned stock sales are planned.

And why is it surprising that Zuckerberg has sold lots of Facebook stock. (1) He owns the most and (2) he has previously gone on record as saying he will be selling stock to finance his charity.

1337biz• 8 years ago

I bet he tries to avoid this becoming a 'Zuckerberg' story and is more okay with FB declining a few points on its brand perception.

threeseed4• 8 years ago

Especially since Zuckerberg has very big plans post Facebook.

dragonwriter2• 8 years ago

Where's Zuckerberg in all of this?

Working out scheduling for testimony to a UK parliamentary inquiry, a couple US congressional committees, and the US FEC?

More seriously, the question is being asked everywhere, even, apparently, within Facebook: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/technology/mark-zuckerberg-f...

bigphishy• 8 years ago

Is that a question or a statement? If it's a statement, it comes across as pontifical.

baq• 8 years ago

what could he say to make you feel better about the whole clusterfuck that's unfolded in the past few days? 'I'm stepping down' is probably the only thing i'd buy.

packeted• 8 years ago

It's also interesting that there is barely a mention of all this in my news feed on Facebook and there have been no links to it as a trending story.

threeseed4• 8 years ago

It is a trending story for me on Facebook.

Interestingly the lead article is, "Here's how to see which apps have access to your Facebook - and cut them off".

non_sequitur• 8 years ago

I don't even like Facebook, but really, is this newsworthy now? I know the media sees it as a chance to dogpile the company that has taken them to the cleaners, but there's a reason people don't trust or like the media anymore and "articles" like these are a big reason why.

symlinkk• 8 years ago

You don't think evidence of the NYT being bossed around by Facebook is newsworthy?

mannykannot5• 8 years ago

Interference with major news sources is always newsworthy. The absence of a customary explanation of a correction is particularly noteworthy.

koomi• 8 years ago

Why would Facebook making a major newspaper stealthily edit an article to their liking - as confirmed by one of the authors - not be worthy news? Do you think this is normal behavior for a newspaper?

fnayr3• 8 years ago

Is it unexpected that that one company asked for a newspaper to change their article to remove references that make one of their C level execs look bad? No, not at all.

It is somewhat thought provoking though that said newspaper may have felt compelled to comply with the request because of Facebook's power (for instance not wanting to lose favorable placement in feed or trending sections).

So to me the newsworthiness of this depends on how likely it is that they changed it because it was simply inaccurate versus something more nefarious (such as above). I believe that may be too subjective to determine at this point so probably no fruitful discussion can come in trying to figure that out.

danso17• 8 years ago

Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of two very high profile investigations in the UK this past week, which caused Facebook to take punitive action against the firm, even though the firm and its misuse of FB data was written about several years ago. One of the revelations this week is that Facebook's CSO had been critical of FB's lack of response to CA and is now leaving the company: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-...

Sometimes newsworthy things become newsworthy after the actual time of events. Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse had been hinted at for years but only this past year did the amount of reporting and attention cause him to face real legal and business problems. Same with Bill Cosby.

bsder• 8 years ago

I don't even like Facebook, but really, is this newsworthy now?

Yes, it is newsworthy because while those of us on HN have been familiar with all the crap that Facebook has been doing for a while now, the common folk have not.

danso17• 8 years ago

FWIW, a NYT article undergoes many changes from the time it was originally posted to whatever its final state (usually, the next day, after the print edition). The story in question was just a few paragraphs when it was first posted, and then more details were added. You can use newsdiffs.org to see the various changes:

http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.nytimes.co...

Here is the specific diff where the Sandberg reference was changed:

http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...

That said, if the explicit conflict between Stamos and Sandberg was a prominent detail, then many folks would argue that the NYT should have a clarification or editor's note explaining the change. However, it's worth noting that the reference to the conflict between Sandberg and Stamos is not omitted from the final edition.

Original:

Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Final:

Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”

The latter reference seems to be just as damning to Sandberg when it comes to her complacency in policing the FB platform, though it doesn't say that her disagreement with Stamos was specifically about the Russia question.

You could still argue that this merits a clarification, i.e. A previous version of this story stated that Ms. Sandberg disagreed with Mr. Stamos in his advocacy for "investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook". However, Mr. Stamos said that he and Sandberg disagreed in general with how proactive Facebook should be in policing its own platform, but the two never specifically debated the issue with respect to revelations of Russian interference.

Karrot_Kream• 8 years ago

Thanks for posting about newsdiffs.org. I didn't know about this, it's awesome!

danso17• 8 years ago

It's a very cool service, I'm always surprised to see it still running given that it was created during a media hackathon and doesn't (AFAIK) have a financial backer: https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/newsdiffs_new_york_times.php

Here's the repo for the site, including its scrapers: https://github.com/ecprice/newsdiffs

greenyoda• 8 years ago

Original: "investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook".

Final: "policing its own platform"

Note that the reference to disagreement about disclosing the information was removed. This seems like a significant change.

danso17• 8 years ago

Keep reading:

Mr. Stamos would be the first high-ranking employee to leave Facebook since controversy over disinformation on its site. Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.

Sandberg's name, and the inability to address growing problems "including Russian interference", are all in the same sentence. If Sandberg called in a favor for this, it was a pretty weak-ass favor. I don't think it matches the OP's assessment that Sandberg re: Russia was "wiped clean off the ether".

In fact, it seems the OP itself requires a correction, because it made the same mistake you did:

Now, Sandberg’s name and the story’s only reference to her alleged role in frustrating Stamos’ attempts to highlight and root out Russian troll influence on the platform are gone because someone at the New York Times replaced the entire sentence.

Again, people can argue that maybe Sandberg asked NYT to move the reference to later in the story. But I mean, there's still the issue of why Sandberg would not pressure NYT to hold off on this story which is extremely damaging to FB as a whole.

mankash666• 8 years ago

If there's hardly any substantiative change, why did Facebook's PR firm lobby for it. Sometimes a spade is just that, a spade

danso17• 8 years ago

Lobby for what? The OP has made no claim that he knows what Facebook PR talked to the the NYT reporters about. The NYT reporters have denied that PR asked them to change anything about Sandberg. The NYT reporter explicitly says that FB "made no such request" [0]

And FB PR hasn't commented either. The OP does not say he has inside sources that tell him otherwise. So what is that that is being asserted here? Because this is the only thing in the story:

Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published.

[0] https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/976238483122487296

Analemma_• 8 years ago

For everyone who cheered when Thiel took down Gawker, this is what you've wrought. Look up the definition of "chilling effect" sometime: even if Gawker's behavior wasn't defensible, now that newspapers know Facebook has a board member willing to go to war with news organizations that don't get in line, they have to self-censor to stay alive.

twblalock• 8 years ago

The coverage of Facebook has been quite negative, including from the NYT. So I'm not sure what self-censorship you're referring to.

danso17• 8 years ago

My main argument for incompetence vs. malice is not necessarily that the NYT is too good to be corruptible/pressured, but because the purported gain (in favor of FB) is so small.

Let's assume the NYT can be influenced to change/kill stories. After all, the Obama administration was able to get the NYT to delay/suppress stories on national security grounds [0], and this doesn't count all the stories that have been starved because of discouragement/apathy by editors.

But these are stories that have been stopped before they saw the light of day. This reference to Sandberg was published in a widely-publicized (i.e. banner breaking news headline on nytimes.com) breaking news story. To censor it for any reason is going to be a difficult and embarrassing and noticeable decision, and one that is going to piss off someone in the editorial chain (e.g. the reporter, or her editor).

So if Sandberg has the ability to pressure the NYT to revoke this reference, why would she do it now? The story is already a major clusterfuck for Facebook because it ties the abrupt dismissal of Facebook's entire security team to allegations about Russian/CA malfeasance on FB's platform. How much face does Sandberg save when the entire company is eating shit, with Sandberg at the helm and being conspicuously absent from making a public statement?

If Sandberg had editorial power, don't you think she would've exercised it by having prior review of the entire story? If the NYT editors were so afraid of her that they'd cave in to pressure to retroactively edit a story in her favor, don't you think they would've brought this story to her attention before publishing it as a breaking news item and spreading it all over Twitter?

NYT famously has one of the most anal-retentive social media policies among all media organizations. If Sandberg had real influence, NYT reporters would not be tweeting this kind of stuff about her:

https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/975899584550465537

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/975793549076611072

FWIW, the author of the NYT article in question has responded to the claims made by the submitted Law & Crime article:

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976156184909553664

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/976157825331216384

[0] https://www.wnyc.org/story/nyt-reporter-james-risen-reportin...

mannykannot5• 8 years ago

I do not see that there is any relevance to this case in the NYT being sensitive to national security issues - that is clearly not an issue here. And if issues of importance have routinely been "starved because of discouragement/apathy by editors" (as opposed to possibly flawed judgements of importance), then it would be helpful to your argument if you could enumerate them.

No-one is suggesting that Sandberg had the editorial power of reviewing all Facebook-related articles before they were published, so the question of why she did not suppress this article before it first appeared does not arise. NYTs failure to seek permission beforehand can adequately be explained by a) it didn't expect the response it got and b) if it were in the habit of seeking such approval, it would destroy its brand, and its reason for existence.

The issue is that the NYT caved in to a demand without even following its normal policy of explaining a correction, and this is a serious matter regardless of whether Sandberg or Facebook were ill-advised to follow this course of action.

The article's author's responses look to me like an attempt at damage control, in that they talk around the central issue with heavy use of weasel words. If the original was deleted because it was superseded by a clearer follow-up, why is the follow-up notably unclear on this very issue?

danso17• 8 years ago

The issue is that the NYT caved in to a demand without even following its normal policy of explaining a correction,

If you start with this premise then you are already begging the question. That is, it's not a given that this revision benefits Sandberg, nevermind that she pulled the strings to make it happen. The reporters' responses have been that the story has been revised to add additional detail (which includes doubling the mentions of Sandberg by name). If you think Sandberg doesn't have such a cozy relationship as to have prior-review power -- or more likely, the suppressive power of reporters being told not to pursue such embarrassing scoops in the first place -- then her asking for this change is going to rankle feathers. So she made this demand, but was OK with the reporters adding this completely unnecessary mention of how reputation-paranoid Sandberg and Zuckerberg are?

The public reaction caused some at Facebook to recoil at revealing more, said the current and former employees. Since the 2016 election, Facebook has paid unusual attention to the reputations of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg, conducting polls to track how they are viewed by the public, said Tavis McGinn, who was recruited to the company last April and headed the executive reputation efforts through September 2017.

And how is it that Sandberg successfully intimidated the NYT to change their story, and then less than 24 hours later, the same NYT reporters publish an a followup that centers completely on the disgruntled executive (CSO Stamos) and is even more explicit about Sandberg and Stamos fighting over Russian interference -- including implying a direct cause and effect between their deteriorating relationship and Stamos's punishment?

By October, the relationship between Mr. Stamos and Ms. Sandberg had deteriorated over how to handle Russian interference on Facebook and how best to reorganize Facebook’s security team before the midterm elections, according to more than half a dozen people who work or formerly worked at the company. Mr. Stamos proposed that instead of reporting to Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch, he report directly to Facebook’s higher-ups.
Instead, executives released Mr. Stamos from much of his day-to-day responsibility, employees said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/alex-stamos-fa...

donohoe2• 8 years ago

As someone who worked at the NYT for 8 years and saw the inner workings I want to say the main assesrtions of this article are FALSE. Seriously. WTF

stochastic_monk3• 8 years ago

Please be clearer. Which claims do you not think are true, and what reasons/evidence do you have behind your assertions?

Do you mean the assertion that NYT made these changes in response to being reached by Facebook's PR team? (This is difficult to prove but suggested by the facts we have.)

Do you mean the assertion that the NYT regularly changes headlines in response to criticism of those being covered? (This is alleged, but I have no proof of this.)

Do you mean the assertion that Facebook contacted the Times after the article was published? (I highly doubt that this is false, and it being true suggests that the first point was true.)

donohoe2• 8 years ago

I was on the subway so I couldn’t dig deep.

In short, the opening paragraph, which the article leans on struck a nerve.

  The New York Times offers powerful third parties the ability to
  edit away–that is, to delete from the internet–unfavorable coverage
  appearing in the paper of record’s online edition.

It’s false. The editorial process is pretty rigorous. No company has a magic “edit” button.

The article goes through rounds of edits post-publish. It’s a established process and not done as-hoc.

tptacek2• 8 years ago

This story doesn't appear to back up the headline. Unless I've missed something, it says that Facebook PR reached out to the NYT, and that the article was edited. That might mean Facebook "demanded" changes, or it might mean that they pointed out errors or additional facts that warranted the correction.

danso17• 8 years ago

You are correct based on what's written. The author implies that Facebook PR reached out to NYT -- but doesn't claim what Facebook PR wanted or how the NYT reacted. This fact (the NYT agrees that FBPR contacted them) is juxtaposed with the observation that people are mad the NYT removed this graf from the original 300-word breaking news story:

Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees...

This is definitely an interesting graf, but I don't (and neither do the NYT reporters, ostensibly) think that it's the key part of the story, not even of the 300-word blurb. In any case, this blurb was updated (rather, replaced) by a 1,300 article at the end of the day:

http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...

The critics of NYT think that the "consternation" line should not have been erased because it apparently is so directly damning of how Sandberg was resistant to deal with Russian interference. The NYT reporters have disagreed; they see the 1000+ words adding far more evidence of how Stamos tried to warn FB.

In any case, the article author is trying to associate 3 unrelated events together:

- NYT made a major update/rewrite of its article about Facebook

- People are mad that the most damning line against Sandberg (re: Russia) was watered down

- Facebook PR contacted NYT after the first version of the story/blurb was published.

The OP has a hypothesis. But no evidence to support it. "Facebook Forces NYT" is not the right headline because the author never purports to prove or claim that Facebook forced NYT to do anything.

botskonet• 8 years ago

The NY Times twitter accounts are saying this is false:

https://twitter.com/NYTimesPR/status/976499121799483394

Facebook Forces NYT to Quietly Delete Unflattering Reference to Sheryl Sandberg

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