When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon. Once we could look into the most sensational anecdotes, we realized why. We presented the Times with our findings several weeks ago, hoping they might take action to correct the record. They haven t, which is why we decided to write about it ourselves.
— Jay Carney, Amazon s senior vice president for global corporate affairs. Amazon is again hitting back at a New York Times article about a brutal corporate workplace culture at the online retailer. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had already spoken out against the story, which was published in August, saying it didn t describe the Amazon I know. But Amazon isn t done. Carney — the former press secretary for President Obama — this morning published a Medium post attacking the NYT s journalistic practices.
For example, the NYT story quoted former Amazon employee Bo Olson as saying nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk. Carney s response:
Here s what the story didn t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately.
Carney provides a couple of other instances that he says should have been accompanied by more context. He says Jodi Kantor, one of the two reporters who wrote the story, never asked us to check or comment on any of the dozen or so negative anecdotes from named sources that form the narrative backbone of the story. He suggests that Amazon would ve shared the details, which he reveals now, about the employees in question.
The New York Times said it talked with more than 100 current and former Amazon employees in reporting its story, which described a punishing workplace complete with the aforementioned crying, backstabbing and punishing employees for health problems. Since the NYT report, Amazon has expanded its effort to get feedback about how its corporate employees are feeling about their work, according to Bloomberg News.
Photo: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces the new Amazon Fire Phone on Wednesday, June 18, 2014, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren/Associated Press)
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