Read on Twitter
1) This is an all-important question. https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1332675459897843714
2) Recently, they exposed McKinsey’s role in the OxyContin crisis we have. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/business/mckinsey-purdue-oxycontin-opioids.html
3) They’ve reported on WalMart’s international bribery.
4) They have a photographer and a reporter on the ground during every war, during every protest, usually risking their lives. (When has anyone in tech ever risked their lives to do their job? It’s rare.)
5) They've reported on the sex slavery in ISIS: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html
6) I could go on and on here, but you get the point.
7) Yes, it's true that journalism's standards are degrading everywhere (even at the NYT), largely due to the pressure that tech has put on their businesses. We spend a lot of time in tech decrying bad journalism, but we never ask who controls their incentives (we do.)
8) At a time when tech has put all of the truth-seeking professions under assault, journalists deserve our respect and our support more than ever, even when they write ... bad stories ... on tech.
9) I say this as someone who has experienced the worst of journalism: I've had two very bad, mostly false, stories where I've been misquoted, and certainly the truth has been distorted, by disgraceful hack journalists.
10) These stories have caused extremely negative effects to a very early stage start-up that we're still digging out of. So I'm well aware of how bad journalism is at the moment, and how wrong they often are.
11) I'm well aware of how little they understand tech and what it takes to build a company, and how this results in some very, very bad reporting as they're easily manipulated by one's "business enemies."
12) But I never doubt that the profession is filled with a lot of well-intentioned people that are trying to tell the truth, and deserve tech's support and respect.
13) Coinbase is not going to suffer one bit from this story. @brian_armstrong is amazing, and he'll be better (if not more trusting) tomorrow. But journalism is under assault at the moment, and journalism, the respectable tradition, may actually not survive tech's assault.
