Facebook on climate change: how to bury bad news | Media

F or government agencies and corporations that have bad news that they are reluctant to publish, there has long been a tradition in public relations called "Friday's dump". Essentially, it's a way of saying, agreeing, okay, we messed everything up, but wait to admit it until the last possible moment so that fewer people hear about it.

The problem is that everyone is constantly connected On their phone, the news goes further than usual on a Friday night. The Trump administration and Facebook needed another way to bury some alarming stories last week. Enter the Thanksgiving news dump.

On Wednesday night, a considerable number of Americans were traveling for Thanksgiving holidays, hitting jobs early or preparing their homes to welcome guests, said Facebook policy and communications manager Elliot Schrage. who confessed that the technology in question The giant had in fact engaged the right-leaning public relations firm, Definers, to denigrate its critics, including allegations of links with billionaire George Soros, a regular in the business of law and subject of theories of antisemitic conspiracy.

Facebook leaders, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg had previously denied knowing about the company's involvement.

. "Have we asked to work on George Soros?" reads the memo. "Yes."

Instead of apologizing for this tactic, Schrage tried to justify them as a standard professional practice and necessary steps after Soros called the social media company a "threat to society" more early this year. Definers urged journalists to examine the financial ties between Soros and a group of anti-Facebook movements.

Another tactic used by Definers was to circulate negative articles about other tech companies to try to drown out the growing number of bad public relations that Facebook was dealing with. with this year. It does not seem to have worked very well.

And on Friday, the Trump administration released financial disclosure forms for its director of communications, Bill Shine. Shine, the former co-chairman of Fox News, will continue to be paid by the network for the next two years, even though he works at the White House.

Although these sound All of them, as serious and important new sounds, none of them will matter if the civilization as we know it comes to an end. Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, was announced by the Trump administration in a much more alarming report.

Cynics would say that this was done to bury one of the deadliest. detailed and comprehensive reports of this type.

The 1,656-page National Climate Assessment, commissioned by the United States Congress, is a report submitted to the United States. peer review of scientists from 13 federal agencies. They conclude that the effects of climate change are already there and should intensify.

Climate change is expected to result in a greater number of types of natural disasters occurring in the United States this year, including deadly fires in California and

. The report concludes that "the evidence Human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to grow, the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country and the threats to the physical, social and economic well-being of Americans increase. "

On Wednesday night, Trump, who himself missed the news of climate reporting, again rejected the idea of ​​climate change.

" Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could break ALL THE RECORDS, "he tweeted," What happened with global warming? "

What happened to global warming, it's that your administration has buried the most nova report on its impacts by publishing it the day after Thanksgiving. Fortunately, the Guardian will offer five summaries of the report throughout the week to inform readers of the report that they have missed.