I am so tired of stories like this:
An Australian study shows that Facebook surfers cost their bosses billions Down Under. “Findings were based on a typical Facebook user, earning an average wage, spending an hour a day on line.”
This was passed along by Lifehackers, but we’ve read it before. Instead of Facebook, the time-waster could have been (and has been) YouTube, blogs, the ‘net itself….
What makes this story, in all its variations, bad journalism are assumptions the stories carry. They are never made explicit, and they are rarely addressed.
One is that the internet and what it makes possible is a Bad Thing for business, because workers get too easily distracted, which costs the company money.
The second, and larger assumption, is that before Facebook (or YouTube, blogs or the ‘net itself…) everyone sat around and worked. Take the hour-a-day figure from the story above. Does anyone believe that in the pre-’net days workers were incapable of being distracted for an hour a day?
TAGS: JOURNALISM, REPORTING, BUSINESS, PRODUCTIVITY
[...] Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media » Bad journalism “What makes this story, in all its variations, bad journalism are assumptions the stories carry. They are never made explicit, and they are rarely addressed. One is that the internet and what it makes possible is a Bad Thing for business, because workers (tags: fallacies journalism problems productivity economics business) [...]