[iateanapple]

> Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes. Tweet author editorialises that Vox is telling them not to.

When you describe techies as terrified in the context of handshakes you make them sound terrified of handshakes which makes them look irrational to the average person.

When you immediately follow that up with “experts” saying everything is fine you cement the view in the readers mind that tech people are acting irrationally.

[madeofpalk]

Look, as a journalist, what are you supposed to do? You don't actually know much - its not expected that you know everything about everything (who does). So you do journalism. You investigate and replay back your findings.

"Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes" Is this a fact, or a lie? Did Vox fabricate this, or did they misconstrue and mislead?

"“experts” saying everything is fine" Did "experts" say everything is fine, or did they not? Again, is Vox outright lying? Did they mislead by picking poor "experts"?

I think that Vox.com's "assertive contrarian" tone-of-voice might have created some posts that look poor in hindsight (erring on the side of "not killing people" is probably for the best), but lets a) actually define the assertions against Vox's journalistic integrity and b) acknowledge that health officials were not exactly clear, consistent, and eventually correct.

[JamesBarney]

Vox got a lot wrong, and he goes through all they go wrong on his tweet.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1228447944287932416

But more importantly a week before the article came out, he said the article won't be about the very real risk of the coronavirus but about how tech guys are weird. And that's exactly the theme of the article.

[phaus]

Well if you want to be a useful journalist you start by not sensationalizing things or carefully framing facts in a way to push a specific narrative.

Being a useful journalist is not profitable though, even when there isn't a pandemic.