Comcast-Owned Vox Runs Commercial for Comcast’s $500M Snapchat Investment

[_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

[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.

[maehwasu]

All Vox articles:

"Why X Thing That a Mainstream Democrat Did That Seems Like a Big Problem Is Actually Not a Big Problem"

"Why X Thing That Person Who Is Not a Mainstream Democrat Did That Seems Innocuous Is Actually the Most Problematic Thing Ever"

[TillE]

> the "Liberal Smugness" piece

Emmett Rensin was very much the exception to the rule. (Actually Jeff Stein is ok too, and he's still at Vox.) But the general bias of Vox is neoliberal technocracy / American liberalism, so it's no surprise that leftists hate them.

They're utterly mainstream (ie, extremely reluctant to challenge established systems or common views) and much lower in quality than they'd like to be.

[forgottenpass]

Does anyone else deeply distrust Vox?

There was never any reason to trust them. I had hopes that the new thing from the Wonkbook dude would be interesting if not also quite useful. Imagine my disappointment to find Ezra just decided just to cash in and spin up yet another hollow, low rent, news blog crafted to target the American left.

Scott Alexander's "Reverse Voxsplaining" articles and The Federalist's occasional trouncing of Vox should be more than enough to kill any lingering notion the Vox brand is interested in journalism.

[camdenlock]

You're not alone in feeling a sense of distrust when reading Vox content. Like Mic, it's more of a finely-tuned fad-amplifying machine than a journalistic outlet. Above all, it seems to prioritize whatever flavor of outrage is popular with the kids at any given moment.

To be fair, though, Mic is almost a bad comparison because of just how much worse it is than Vox. But they certainly are thematically similar.

[cylinder]

Ezra Klein is unbearable. And their "Explainers" and "Here's what you need to know" posts give me the creeps.

[dstaley]

One of the reasons people seem to have an aversion to Vox's format is that it's not meant to be like the rest of news journalism. When they first announced Vox, it was described as such:

> Vox.com is news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

So, if you're accustomed to "the noise", I can understand why you might distrust Vox.

[oculusthrift]

it definitely has an anti-trump bias but i actually enjoy it. their philosophy is to actually educate the reader about issues rather than just tell the newest facts. i.e. instead of saying a bill was vetoed, they'll go into the history of similiar bills and what the bill had in it and why it was rejected. while most sites would just tell you it was rejected.

[OedipusRex]

I'd argue that Vox is closer to MSM than it's viewer's would like to believe. They're fact-lite and heavy on opinion; every party has 'em.

That being said I watch everything they put out on YouTube. Some of it's really good.

[RodericDay]

Emmett Rensin is the author of that piece, and he's an incredibly talented commentator and rising star. Now that he's building some credibility, he can be a bit pickier about where he publishes.

I happened to be plugging him just yesterday on a discussion about the Obama administration on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13791139

If you want pieces like that "Liberal Smugness" one, I strongly recommend Current Affairs magazine, and Jacobin (but Jacobin is more hit or miss). Current Affairs is pointedly against Vox.com, and has a piece explaining their opposition to it here:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/explaining-it-all

[JoshTko]

My impression of New Yorker as an unbaliased source of news has significantly declined over the past few years. They clearly have a specific liberal perspective. Maybe subtle in their bias but nonetheless a persistent and one sided one.

[germinalphrase]

Your read is generally correct. When Vix started their explicit mission was to focus on analysis rather than reporting. They figure (correctly, it seems) that people don't really want new facts so much as they want to know if/how/why these facts matter.

Edit: word salad

[paulpauper]

Vox was launched in early 2014 and has seen blistering traffic growth since. Given that they were able to grow so rapidly in an already saturated news media environment dominated by Washington Post, Time, CNN, WSJ, and New York Times, suggests they are doing something right.

[jgalt212]

> They seem more interested in telling me how to feel

How very millennial. Perhaps it's on purpose.

[Apocryphon]

How does Politico compare to Vox in terms of that liberal skew?

[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...

[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.

[013a]

Yeah, that's asking a lot of journalists. We all know that writing high quality pieces is what Vox is famous for, I guess they just can't be expected to have the time to put something like "journalistic integrity" or "proper research" into what they write.

[te_chris]

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

[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.

[swampthinker]

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

[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"?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[late2part]

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

[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.

[interstitial]

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