
Comcast-Owned Vox Runs Commercial for Comcast’s $500M Snapchat Investment - Sujan
http://fair.org/home/with-no-disclosure-comcast-owned-vox-runs-commercial-for-comcasts-500m-snapchat-investment/
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_mhyx
Does anyone else deeply distrust Vox? The quality varies a LOT, they
frequently present opinions as facts, etc.

The weird thing is they have moments of brilliance like the "Liberal Smugness"
piece - but search "Vox News article" and it looks like even the left really
hates them.

They seem more interested in telling me how to feel than the facts, I guess. I
wish the rest of the world had the same pride in journalism as say, the
Economist or the New Yorker

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Dirlewanger
Vox and all its sibling outlets (Polygon, the Verge, etc.) have devolved into
poison. They've surpassed Mother Jones as the Internet's premiere outraged
bleeding liberal rag. Their headlines are physically painful to read. They are
unabashed smug coastal liberalism.

Their videos are consistently high quality though. I'll go there probably once
a month and watch a handful.

~~~
BadassFractal
Liberalism or leftism? A lot of the modern trends you see from the left
actually feel very illiberal.

~~~
uncletaco
Leftist ideology is not mutually inclusive of liberalism (in the philosophical
sense) but that's true of most ideologies. Heck, mix nationalism (extreme
patriotism) with socialism (illiberal leftist ideology) and you can get
national socialism (far-right Nazism).

~~~
dannypgh
The claim that nationalism socialism is a type of socialism is dubious. Names
are tricky like that. [http://www.politicususa.com/2012/09/12/hitler-explains-
gop-w...](http://www.politicususa.com/2012/09/12/hitler-explains-gop-wrong-
national-socialism.html)

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dstaley
I totally think that when a Vox Media publication writes about Comcast that
they should disclose the fact that Comcast Ventures owns a minority stake in
Vox Media. However, I think it's a bit ridiculous to expect them to disclose
this every time they cover one of their investor's portfolio companies.
According to Crunchbase [1], there are 1,124 companies that share at least one
investor with Vox Media. That's a pretty large list for editors to keep track
of. I'm not aware of any publication that provide disclosure statements when
they cover one of their investor's portfolio companies.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vox-
media/insights/i...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vox-
media/insights/investors)

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iaw
I think the challenge arises in ascertaining whether or not there is an
adverse incentive driving their reporting on a given story.

In the case of Snap it seems safe to conclude that someone asked them to write
positive stories. The need to disclose _all_ potential conflicts arise because
we cannot trust the authors of these sponsored stories to honestly disclose
that that is what they are.

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binarybits
"It seems safe to conclude that someone asked them to write positive stories."
As the author of the article in question, I can tell you that this is false.

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te_chris
The Baffler, one of my favourite publications, nailed Vox a wee while back:
[https://thebaffler.com/salvos/explanation-for-what-
johnson](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/explanation-for-what-johnson)

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smsm42
I find the headline a little misleading. Reading it, I was thinking "ok, Vox
runs an ad for Comcast - what's wrong, all the press runs ads, that's how they
make the money, and why would they refuse to run an ad for Comcast?". Reading
further, the allegation seems to be much more serious - that Vox run an
article, purporting to be an editorial content, but in fact being, by its
content, very close to an ad. Wasn't clear from the headline at all.

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swampthinker
Which is strange, as Vox and it's child companies usually do a good job of
disclosing things like this.

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pkill17
There was another example in this very article of them writing a glowing
defense of Comcast, which they neglected to put a disclaimer on until a large
outcry caught up with them. Where are you getting your opinion that they
"usually do a good job of disclosing things"?

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cmdrfred
I think the problem is a lot of people go "I agree with essentially everything
this newspaper puts out, thus this is great journalism!" when really good
journalism would likely have you disagreeing with it as much as you agree.

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richk449
Of course, since most people don't want to read things that they disagree
with, the result is that most people don't want to read good journalism.

~~~
smsm42
I think you oversimplify. Most peopke are more tolerant to bad journalism if
it confirms their prejudices. And doing good journalism is harder than doing
bad one. Thus it is easy to get away with bad one if you only care about click
and/or only care for one ideological niche. But that doesn't mean there's no
demand for high quality journalism - it's just harder to do it, so less people
bother to. In nonpolitical topics, where prejudices are less strong, there is
plenty of quality content. And if we stop supporting crappy content in
political topics, it will happen there too.

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zjaffee
This makes no sense, while Vox might sometimes post video stories on their
discover platform, it's not particularly common that they do when compared to
other partners such as mashable or buzzfeed.

Regardless, you see similar articles about Snap on websites that don't share
any major investors with the company, so this argument doesn't really make
sense.

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pkill17
If large stakeholders in Snap also had large stakes in all these media outlets
praising the Snap IPO, would you say the same?

It's not really about what everyone else is reporting; it's the fact that no
matter what the spin, they should disclose their ties to Snap's success so the
reader is fully aware that this piece could come across as a back-scratch type
of move on Vox's part.

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paulpauper
I'm guessing that investment is now up 100% minimum..I wish I could have
invested too when it was only worth $3 billion.

The question is, how far down the chain is a disclosure necessary? It seems
like calling out conflicts of interest is a way to discredit someone or
something without having to actually create an argument against it.

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securingsincity
Being a regular vergecast listener they regularly disclose that the verge
which is part of vox is invested by comcast. It's interesting that vox
wouldn't when it's other publications do so even when they are just riffing in
their podcast.

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late2part
Is it any wonder that the youth distrusts media. The confidence seems to be
disappearing quicker than a picture on Snapchat.

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throwthisawayt
On a slight tangent, anyone else really annoyed by the articles which seem to
be "company profiles" but really are PR puff pieces. They masquered as real
journalism but they feel like content spoon fed by the company's PR manager.
They tend to be at publications like Fast company, Techcrunch, and business
insider. Anyone have a way to filter out puff pieces? I have been thinking
about building an algorithm since these pieces now filter into more reputable
sources like WSJ and Nytimes too.

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interstitial
Next you guys are going to think the CIA's contract with the owner of the
Washington Post is a bad thing.

