Amazon, New York Times trade punches over 'crying at desks' story

PLUS special feature audio: Could employees be dragged into a media fight here? Click the NBR Radio box to hear the Privacy Commissioner's take.

Amazon.com and the New York Times are trading blows today over the Times' August story that alleged white-collar bullying at the giant online retailer.

The profile included the famous line from an ex-Amazon staffer that "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk."

It was potent stuff. The story drew more than 6000 comments.

Today, Amazon finally hit back in detail through a block post by its PR boss Jay Carney (an alumnus of the Obama White House).

Mr Carney took the front foot tack of naming employees involved in the Times story, and publishing extra details of their work records and performance reviews (read What the New York Times didn't tell you).

Referencing Bo Olson (the employee who delivered the "cry" quote), he writes: "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." The Times should have thought about Mr Olson's motivation for slagging off his ex-employer, the spin doctor says. 

Other employees also had positive comments in their performance reviews, Mr Carney notes, along with the negative ones cited. One even got promoted.

The New York Times returned fire within hours with a lengthy rebuttal. The guts of it is that its reporters spoke to more than 100 Amazon staff, and a clear pattern emerged of it being a tough place to work. 

Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet says if his paper had known about the allegation facing Mr Olson it would have mentioned it; he also notes that it is an allegation only, and denied by the ex-employee. Amazon did not bring any criminal charges.

Mr Baquet also says much of the performance review feedback mentioned in the Times' piece were verbal, and took a much more scathing tack than Amazon's written record of the meetings.

The Times stands by its story.

My take: it's a bad day to be Bo Olson but a good day for the internet. This is what the web is for: argument and counter-argument backed by facts. The publish nature of the slugfest has increased our knowledge of Amazon, and the Times.

Lastly, a factoid absent from the avalanche of US coverage of the spat today, and all of the subtext it implies: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos bought the New York Times arch rival The Washington Post in 2013. He's attacking the Times as a Silicon Valley leader but also as a media mogul.