
5G Got me Fired - adamrezich
https://medium.com/@dvorak/5g-got-me-fired-ce407e584c4a
======
Barrin92
>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s
commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the
only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers
need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native
advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every
publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadcasting networks and most of the
major newspapers including the New York Times. Are the writers saying nice
things or are they paid to say nice things?

I think we quickly need changes in the way we handle native advertising. It is
hugely problematic and basically predatory.

I believe that there are ways to genuinely advertise if the advertisement is
openly disclosed and the ad is informative, but native advertising is
essentially just a sophisticated and insidious form of manipulation. It turns
readers into non-consenting consumers and the purpose of journalism from
informing truthfully to a sales pitch. I have trouble imagining that many
people think this is tolerable if we'd be debating it openly and brought it to
the forefront of the news (which ironically is not going to happen).

~~~
petermcneeley
"The power of advertisers over television programming stems from the simple
fact that they buy and pay for the programs-they are the "patrons" who provide
the media subsidy. As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing
specialized staff to solicit advertisers and necessarily having to explain how
their programs serve advertisers’ needs. The choices of these patrons greatly
affect the welfare of the media, and the patrons become what William Evan
calls "normative reference organizations," whose requirements and demands the
media must accommodate if they are to succeed." \- Noam Chomsky , Manufacture
of Consent.

~~~
Robotbeat
This makes me think that, besides the fact that Elon Musk seems to constantly
has his foot in his mouth nowadays, this may be partly why Tesla has been
getting so much negative press coverage (particularly headlines, which are
usually written by editors, not the journalists who seem more objective to
me). Tesla doesn't advertise. Everyone else in the industry does, bankrolling
the press.

I know the press will deny this motive, but how can it not be a factor, even
slightly?

~~~
gurumeditations
Maybe Tesla receives negative press coverage for its poor workmanship,
constant delays, near-unrepairability, bad labor conditions, union-busting,
the CEO lying to investors, the CEO being unstable, precarious financial
state, unfulfilled promises, reckless deadly computer-assisted driving sold as
if it were self-driving, lack of independent competent management, a valuation
highly dependent upon retaining a single executive, a valuation wildly
overinflated by any objective measure, nonsensical acquisition of a failing
home solar company run by a family member of the CEO, nonsensical and
distracting forays into products unrelated to building and selling cars, it
goes on...

This is not to mention the constant good press it receives.

~~~
billylindeman
It blows my mind how many Tesla apologists/fanboys are in this thread. Liking
Elon Musk and thinking Tesla is heading for bankruptcy are not mutually
exclusive. I think he's generally a force for good in the tech industry and
greater world, but I've been pretty grim on TLSA for almost 3 years now. They
are overvalued, under delivering, and Elon has seemed to be in the midst of a
manic breakdown pretty much since his breakup with Amber Heard.

~~~
arthurcolle
For what its worth, I'd probably lose my mind too if I was dating Amber Heard
and we broke up. Godspeed, hope he recovers soon.

------
davidmr
Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical
of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically
are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there _any_ evidence whatsoever that
this is what happened?

So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he
was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's
Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the
situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his
article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article
to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and
the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about
everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the
head?

I don't buy it.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Having run a newspaper, I can confirm that advertisers do contact management
and say "I didn't like that article, do something about it or we won't be
advertising with you again". And the financial pressure is intense. You have
many, many staff to pay, and the commercial pressure to keep advertisers happy
is real and difficult to manage.

I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an
advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story. It happens every day.
Luckily I never had to do it, but there were times I was very tempted.

I totally agree with his comment that the only way journalism is going to
survive is if readers start paying for it. What we have now is mostly not-
journalism.

~~~
stordoff
> I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an
> advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story.

As an example of where it has happened:

> Gerstmann revealed that his firing was in fact related to the low review
> score he had given to Kane & Lynch, though his explanation cited other
> similar events that led up to the termination, including a 7.5 (good) rating
> given to Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction by Aaron Thomas, then
> an employee under Gerstmann. Events such as these led to him being "called
> into a room" several times to discuss reviews posted on the site. Gerstmann
> went on to lay the blame on a new management team that was unable to
> properly handle tension between the marketing and editorial staff, laying
> additional blame on the marketing department, which he claimed was
> unprepared in how to handle publisher complaints and threats to withdraw
> advertising money over low review scores.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann)

~~~
nemild
Lots more examples in my media literacy guide:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media)

Search for _Access:_

------
ghaff
With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g.
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireless-
rekindles-fight-over-cellular-health-risks) (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if
it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot
theory land.

That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but
not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over
the years.

~~~
matchagaucho
The same city that banned 5G for health reasons also leads the state in
rejecting vaccines for children (anti-vaxxers).

[https://patch.com/california/millvalley/mill-valley-
parents-...](https://patch.com/california/millvalley/mill-valley-parents-
reject-vaccines-at-a-higher-rate-than-state-and-marin-county-averages)

~~~
mike10010100
This. People claiming that cell phone signals cause cancer or other ill health
effects are crackpots, nothing more, nothing less.

The claims simply don't make sense. Non-ionizing EM radiation has absolutely
no documented effects on humans.

~~~
adsfqwop
You mean the people at the World Health Organization are crackpots? Microwave
radiation is classified as a Class 2B carcinogen by WHO.

Here's 67 studies on the biological effects of microwaves, ranked by
transmission power:

[https://i.imgur.com/14uxRru.png](https://i.imgur.com/14uxRru.png)

All of them crackpots?

Here's a study of EM fields on neonatal babies:

"Electrical Grounding Improves Vagal Tone in Preterm Infants"

[https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/475744](https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/475744)

There was also an article written on this publication:

[https://www.futurity.org/grounding-nicu-
babies-1507412/](https://www.futurity.org/grounding-nicu-babies-1507412/)

I guess the babies were not informed of your crackpot theory?

Here's a website with a database of 26,819 publications on the effects of
electromagnetic fields on biology, including human and animal studies:

[https://www.emf-portal.org/en](https://www.emf-portal.org/en)

More crackpots, I assume?

We have constantly accumulating evidence that EM radiation in fact IS harmful.
The biggest reason the public is not aware of this, is simply because the
wireless industry is making too much money from this technology.

The wireless industry employ some of the biggest lobbying groups in the world.
With the amount of funds and leverage available to them, it becomes easier to
influence legislation and decision makers.

That's all there is to it. No conspiracy, no crackpots. It's simply business

~~~
mike10010100
What a wonderful Gish Gallop. Thanks for letting me be another in your long
line of intellectually dishonest copypasta responses. Keep on pushing
conspiracy theories like the "deep state"!

------
bArray
>Addendum — the original 5G column is still up in India! Click here.

Then the dreaded "403 Not allowed".

Archived here:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-
problem-with-5g)

~~~
basicplus2
Thanks for that!

Here's the critical bit...

<I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet
because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves
(30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the
human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs
serious research.

Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the
technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact
that it has already been weaponized by the military

[http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defe...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defense.gov/About/Frequently-
Asked-Questions/Active-Denial-System-FAQs/)

These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a
transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work.>

~~~
zdragnar
Aren't the frequencies regulated by the FCC? Why should industry bear the
burden of proving something safe that the government has already approved?
It's not the world I like, but it's the one we're in.

Edit: just realized I missed where the quote ended. My question remains,
though I suppose patent isn't really who I meant to ask.

------
ghaff
There's some sort of weird redirect loop going on if you do a Google search
and try to go to that link:

[https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-
is-5gpcmag.com/com...](https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-
is-5gpcmag.com/commentary/363244/the-problem-with-5g)

CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent
a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire
someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the
sorry state of so many long-established tech pubs.

~~~
exikyut
/!\ Working link

Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very
suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating,
two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows
the old article. Nice one.

Since this'll probably be "fixed", I fed the URL to archive.is:
[http://archive.is/KbsW8](http://archive.is/KbsW8)

[Also, for posterity, the view of the 403:
[http://archive.is/ggMat](http://archive.is/ggMat) \- thanks to whoever added
this]

------
technologia
He raises many good points about the potential downsides of 5G. US telecom
corporations are rushing to beat China Telecom companies & South Korean
companies to the punch. The US is definitely not going to have the same
dominance in 5G that they had with 4G, especially if they take hazardous paths
to a nationwide rollout

~~~
brokensegue
Does he raise good points? Reads like FUD to me. You could write basically the
same article about wifi

~~~
yholio
I don't know what was the cause of him getting fired, but he certainly SHOULD
be fired for such a sleazy sensationalist piece:

> When you do a search for "5G is Safe" on Google and Bing, you get a number
> of negative stories and a laundry list of why some people believe it's
> unsafe. Companies may as well begin to market a 5G mobile phone with a skull
> and crossbones on it.

Really, the entirety of his journalistic research is a Google search that
somehow justifies him to reproduce conspiracy theories as facts? Technology
similar to 5G "has been already weaponized"? Good riddance.

~~~
xevb3k
I guess we read the article differently. Because he didn’t seem to be saying
5G was dangerous, more that this was the public perception, and that vendors
are doing little to manage the PR around this.

~~~
ghaff
If that's the intent, it's poorly written.

It's fine to observe that search results pop up a lot of pieces and
discussions about 5G health concerns. And those may lead to adoption problems
whether they're true or not. But if you're writing a good column, even though
it is an opinion piece, you should probably then point out things like: XYZ
studies dispute these health effects and that these sort of concerns have been
brought up with pretty much every new radio technology.

If you just say there's a bunch of scary information out there (without even
pointing to anything specific), you leave the impression that there's likely
some truth in all of it.

Dvorak at least was a pretty high profile tech columnist. But he's tended
toward a clickbait style even before there were links to click on.

~~~
xevb3k
That maybe the case, but bad enough to get fired over? That’s not clear to me.

The way modern writing works, I would expect he got paid very little for
writing this. You’re kind of asked to push out X many blog posts a day,
there’s not a huge amount of time for research... or even re-reading/thinking
over the implications of your work.

~~~
ghaff
Please let's not just surrender to "That's how modern writing works." I
suppose it is at some publications, perhaps including pcmag.com. But there are
plenty of thoughtful, researched articles and columns out there to read. That
column has maybe a tweet's worth of content.

~~~
xevb3k
It’s not how things work everywhere I’m sure. But it seems likely in this
case. As such, the content doesn’t surprise me, and I would put the blame
solely on the author in this case.

------
randall
Dvorak is a troll. I could go show the reasons, but he's all about saying
inflammatory things (mostly at apple fans) and getting them to buy magazines /
click things. This is a continuation in that trend, but may or may not be
true.

~~~
adamrezich
Dvorak has been known to troll but when you write a typical Dvorak-tier
skeptical piece on 5G then new management fires you and suddenly your
5G-skeptical piece has been replaced by a pro-5G piece, I don't see how you
can reach any conclusion other than the same one he did in this post. Did you
even read the post?

~~~
busterarm
Especially since they presented demonstrably false pretenses in their notice
to him as to why he was being let go.

------
busterarm
I did post about this in the other thread and folks piled on calling me a
conspiracy theorist, but in the letter JCD received from his editor, they said
they were shutting down all outside columns.

This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some
other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while
continuing to have articles published.

~~~
ghaff
In my personal experience though, ending these sorts of outside contracts with
a half-truth in the vein of "the organization has decided to make a change"
isn't remotely unusual. It's entirely possible that PC Mag decided to prune
their outside contributors to a core group and perhaps change their
relationship somewhat with the remaining ones.

Is it disingenuous, especially with someone who has been working for you in
some form for a very long time? Sure. But I've seen a number of online pubs
that go through changes with their outside contributors and communication is
mostly pretty poor.

~~~
busterarm
The still retain outside columnists. The PC Mag editor straight up lied.

------
SamWhited
Updated link in the post is broken, here's an internet archive link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag....](https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-
problem-with-5g)

------
lettergram
As far as I can tell, it's almost as if the vast majority of articles on the
web are native ads. When the regular article writers have to compete against
the native ads to get views on their content... they really don't have a
choice.

Native ads are presented as stock market news, the NYT publishes it regularly,
really what's the point... Figured I'd even start doing it on my blog (mostly
a joke):

[https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-
awful/](https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/)

Fact is, it's the new world we live in. Just like I may pay for cable and I
get ads; I can pay for the NYT and their content is nothing more than an ad.

------
bunnycorn
John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong.

He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one.

Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple.

He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence
that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to
discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued
that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc.
etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed
that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the
iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date).

There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks
and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech.

Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple
hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the
PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to
go.

~~~
myth_buster
He may be a troll but that doesn't discount the point he's addressing that in
the absence of subscription model, content will be driven by who pays for it
(ie. other than the readers).

~~~
djrogers
It’s been _decades_ since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine
and newspaper revenue - probably about the time most of use were in diapers...

~~~
joecool1029
>It’s been decades since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine
and newspaper revenue

Yeah no. If you’re going to make claims like that you better source it. Source
for the NY Times says the exact opposite:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-
ne...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-new-york-
times-company-by-source/)

------
chx
One of my favorite computer articles of all time is also written by Mr Dvorak:
[https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp](https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp)

~~~
ghaff
It's mostly nonsense though. Itanium ended up being a bad bet for Intel and HP
but both companies mostly just moved on with Xeon. Intel's worse bet was on
x86 in mobile.

------
newnewpdro
This was my first encounter with the term "native advertising", and it's a
perfect term for describing the bulk of YouTube content. A welcome addition to
my vocabulary.

------
gukov
It appears the Indian edition has also removed the article now.

------
desireco42
This is John C Dvorak style. I guess if they don't like it, they had to fire
him. But, if this gets you fired, how can you write about anything.

I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer.

Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being
branded as new 5G and being always connected.

~~~
dboreham
There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links
between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of
course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans
widely.

Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who
deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-
ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject.
Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.

~~~
pyre
> _I 'm fine with anything non-ionizing_

Marie Curie was also fine with working with Radium... until we found out that
it wasn't good for you. The thing about stuff like cancers is that it's really
difficult to say "this person's cancer was caused by X." The best we can do
are wide spectrum studies about cancer rates, and try to use statistics to
limit the variables.

------
cvs268
Atleast we now know that the "PC" in "PC Magazine" now stands for "Politically
Correct".

Everything now needs to be neutered down without offending anyone, especially
any groups with deep pockets.

------
DLA
I _really_ wish posts to Medium would indicate if its a story that hits agains
the Preview Member stories.

