Amazon is firing back at The New York Times for an exposé that the online retail giant is claiming to be a "disservice to readers."
The original report, which was published on Aug. 16, was a highly critical article on the allegedly grueling culture of the Amazon workplace. The report garnered almost 6,000 online comments, allowing it to claim the feat of being the most commented upon article in the history of the newspaper.
The reporters, Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, described Amazon's workplace as one that forced crushing workloads on employees, with the bosses being very demanding ones that hurled harsh words and criticisms to the pressured workers.
The article described a workplace that many users resonated with, as employees of Amazon or other companies in the tech industry.
However, Amazon senior VP of corporate affairs Jay Carney has fired back at The New York Times, through a post on online publishing platform Medium.
"Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk," was a quote from the report that was placed right below its headline. Carney particularly took notice of the quote, which was credited to Bo Olson.
According to Carney, however, the writers did not reveal all the details about Olson, specifically the fact that his short time as an Amazon employee was ended after Olson was found to have tried to defraud sellers and hide it by altering business records. Following an investigation, Olson admitted to the act and immediately resigned.
Carney called out the fact that, despite working on the story for six months, Kantor, who was in regular communication with Amazon, never bothered to check the credibility of a source that would have a quote serve as the foundation for the whole report.
The example of Olson was not the only case of such a wrong practice, as Carney pointed out other negative anecdotes included in the article that were not checked by Kantor for credibility.
"When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both. Why did the Times choose not to follow standard practice here? We don't know," Carney wrote in criticism of the article.
Carney also wrote that Amazon presented its findings to The New York Times on how the anecdotes in the report were sensationalized several weeks ago, with the company looking for the newspaper to correct itself. However, The New York Times has not done so, prompting Carney to write up his scalding post in Medium.
