NEW YORK — (CNN) The New York Times’ searing expose on workplace conditions at Amazon has been hailed by some as a piece of exemplary journalism.
The Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan, however, had a more lukewarm reaction to the piece on Tuesday.
The Amazon story, Sullivan said, “was driven less by irrefutable proof than by generalization and anecdote.”
“For such a damning result, presented with so much drama, that doesn’t seem like quite enough,” Sullivan wrote on Tuesday.
The 5,700-word story, which was published online Saturday and was co-authored by Times reporters Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, detailed the grueling hours and unforgiving pace that epitomize work at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
Kantor and Streitfeld interviewed more than 100 current and former Amazon employees for the story, including several who said Amazon’s work climate left people in tears.
Amazon, which recently surpassed Wal Mart as the world’s biggest retailer, pushed back strongly against the Times’ reporting. The company’s CEO Jeff Bezos said he didn’t recognize the Amazon that was described in the Times’ article.
Jay Carney, the former White House spokesman who now serves as senior vice president for corporate global affairs at Amazon, said the company is “an incredibly compelling place to work.”
Sullivan’s critique noted, “The evidence against Amazon, while powerful, is largely anecdotal, not data-driven. And anecdotes can be used and interpreted in any number of ways.”
In criticizing the article’s heavy use of anecdotes, Sullivan wondered if the piece really “nail[ed] down the reality of life as an Amazon employee.”
Amazon wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Sullivan has been an aggressive public editor at the Times, wading into controversies over other investigative pieces by the newspaper.
She recently examined reporting on the treatment of nail salon workers and rejected criticism of the reporting.
She also scolded the paper for its coverage of reports that Hillary Clinton was being criminally investigated for her State Department emails.
The story had to be corrected several times and Sullivan called the reporting process “a mess.”
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