Published in News

Verizon starts tech news site

by on30 October 2014

We want more press releases

The US tech press is one of the most tame in the world, frequently rolling over for the big companies that it reports.  However it seems that Verizon does not think it is tame enough and so it is starting up its own news site.

Dubbed SugarString.com, the publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, and claims it is going to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge.

SugarString.com is only being bankrolled by Verizon but in exchange for the dosh tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world.

This would mean that when the Edward Snowden leaks showed that Verizon gave the National Security Agency (NSA) all of its customers’ phone records, this particularly news source would not report it.

Verizon gave the NSA landline phone records without customer consent or a warrant. Just this week, it was revealed that Verizon is tracking all of its wireless customers movement throughout the Web, so don’t expect that sort of reporting either.

Verizon is behind the moves to kill net neutrality so we can understand it would want that particularly story not being covered.

SugarString reporters are allowed to write, and have already written about, spying in other countries. They are allowed to slam the Chinese for their surveillance.  What they have to do is reassure Americans that they are superior and are not being spied on.

In the good old days no journalist would actually work under such conditions.  The US trade press lowered the bar considerably over the last decade – even to the point of actively campaigning for some companies. Now it seems that they have gone the full Orwellian hog and sold out completely.

 

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