- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/62136174
Altman’s remarks in his tweet drew an overwhelmingly negative reaction.
“You’re welcome,” one user responded. “Nice to know that our reward is our jobs being taken away.”
Others called him a “f***ing psychopath” and “scum.”
“Nothing says ‘you’re being replaced’ quite like a heartfelt thank you from the guy doing the replacing,” one user wrote.
A journalist’s job is to check out the window. If you’re only quoting the people saying it’s raining or it’s sunny, you are repeating propaganda. People who demand that journalists only quote exactly the words that are fed to them get upset when journalists actually try to explain what’s happening and what those people are really doing. Journalism needs to maintain context and the consequences not written in the PR stunt.
No, I’m totally with you on providing the surrounding context for a clearer picture. That would be an example of good journalism. Providing the context with the tweet is different than titling the article “[person] says that [programmer’s] time is over”. That is fully just interpreting the situation for readers and delivering it like fact. Especially with how prevalent it is for not reading beyond headlines, it’s (in my opinion) irresponsible to do something like that.
He did say “thank you for bringing us up to this point” which is what the article is translating as “you’re fired”. Because that is indeed what it means in corporate speech, the article is correct. Everyone else is sharing the same interpretation, too, because we know what kind of guy Altman is.
That’s the speech of a techbro CEO who has reached his revenue goal and is announcing that he’s closing your shop.
That’s perfectly fine for people to interpret it that way, and if they’re right and Altman fires his programmers (I highly doubt this, because while he’s an idiot, he’s not stupid) they will be proven correct.
My point is that for a journalist to make the interpretation and deliver is as fact, to me, crosses a line.
It’s one thing to say, “Altman thanks programmers for their work amidst layoffs across the industry” and another thing entirely to say, “Altman says programmers time is over”. It weakens trust in journalism to make an interpretation as a journalist and deliver it to an audience as fact when it very well might not be true.