Bonum Certa Men Certa

WHERE ARE THE JOURNALISTS?

JOURNALISTS, not parrots

Daniel Ellsberg, speaking at a press conference, New York City



Summary: Despite it being crystal clear that the latest wave of Microsoft layoffs is international, the corporate media pretends it's limited to just two cities in one single state and that these layoffs are just routine and nothing out of the ordinary

The 'media' coverage regarding the latest Microsoft layoffs is, as expected, worse than disappointing. We just see a bunch of Microsoft PR reps (or Microsoft's media operative inside newsrooms), not reporting, and we've gives some examples with editorial comments in our latest Daily Links and in Tux Machines. Where's the actual research? One parrot parroting another parrot, parroting/citing Microsoft or a Microsoft spinner in a Microsoft-sponsored 'news' site?



What is the job of a reporter or the job of a journalist anyway? A journalist should expose to the public facts previously unknown, e.g. suppressed by the powerful, not a bunch of "tweets" or what some PR department issues in a media statement. Otherwise, there's no real value in the work. "That was the old way of journalism," my wife has just reminded me. Now they just wait to see "what's happening in TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, there's no investigation..."

It's not that hard to find/fish out the facts, especially with some budget that publishers used to allocate for such work. Phone Microsoft in London, then ask something like, "hi, it's John from The Times, do you have any layoffs this week? OK, thank you, bye." "Hallo, Microsoft Deutschland, [same routine]"... try to gather information this way. If they don't want to respond, then be clever.

One step up: "Can you DENY that you have layoffs this week?" Non-response means something is amiss. Be creative. And if they lie, report that too.

So far we've seen that aside from the "AI" spin they try to pretend this is some kind of normal or routine or annual thing (we saw those same lies in prior years). That's a lie. It's easy to disprove. They've shut down entire units. Look at the WARN pages for years such as 2010-2020. The latest post in Techrights was entitled "Media Already Lies About the Scale of Microsoft’s Latest Wave of Layoffs" because they only count the first batch in only two cities like it is the global total. The mainstream media wrote about it one hour ago. This one says "The Redmond-based tech giant on Monday disclosed the cuts, affecting 276 local employees, in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing Monday with state of Washington."

But we know there are more layoffs in other states, cities, countries, and continents. We also know they split the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings to make the numbers seem smaller. We showed an example of that yesterday. The article then says "Microsoft announced in January that it would lay off 10,000 workers globally, joining other companies in an industrywide headcount-cutting trend. Microsoft's reductions affected over 2,700 local employees."

The part about "10,000 workers globally" is false. They repeat the claims from Microsoft! Then, what they mean by "local employees" is just workers in Seattle, not Redmond (as in "Redmond-based tech giant") or even the United States as a whole. They get very basic facts wrong. Is this the best "professional journalism" can yield? Seems more like Microsoft propaganda/stenography, not journalism.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
 
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
there's a wide window of opportunity opening
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
Links for the day
In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
Links for the day
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
Links for the day
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025