Zuckerberg, NY Times face backlash from employees

Protests over racial injustice and police brutality continue to spread across the country, leaving employees to question their bosses actions against Trump and the black lives matter movement. Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel discusses.

Video Transcript

- Well, as we have seen people take to the streets over the past week to protest the killing of George Floyd and so many others at the hands of police, we've also seen increasing dissent within companies, and in particular within media and tech companies. One prominent example coming just yesterday when "The New York Times" published an op ed by Senator Tom Cotton in which he called for military intervention in US cities.

A number of reporters and other employees at the "New York Times" took to Twitter, and all of them basically tweeting similar sentiments, saying that they thought that this op ed put the lives of the employees-- particularly the black employees at "The New York Times" and black people everywhere-- in danger. That was the word that they used. The publisher of "The Times" has responded in a note saying that he defended the decision, but at the same time said he was going to listen to employees.

Melody Hahm, I know you've been watching this issue closely. And it is interesting, and a shift, seemingly, particularly at a place like "The Times," where I believe the policy is for reporters to not take an action like this.

MELODY HAHM: Yes, exactly. And you know, just reading through this letter, Julie, I have to say it's cowardly. You know, I'm looking at five different, kind of, Tweet-grabs that folks from "The Times" really published on Twitter this morning. And like you say, there is no real apology to the black journalists who are fighting on the front lines, who are attending these protests, who are in danger in order to cover this story.

And even here internally, we can disclose that we have had these kinds of trainings, right? If we're to do field reporting, the kinds of protections that we need to do. And these are even folks who are not black, who are facing those sorts of danger.

So I think there is definitely some momentum that's coming from internally, where perhaps even five, six years ago, there wouldn't have been this galvanized group-- a course, of sorts, internally. They might have been fearful for their jobs. They don't want to speak up. But I think there is momentum here.

And kind of switching gears a little bit, thinking about a company like Facebook where we have seen 33 employees-- early employees-- penning a letter, essentially saying that they were responsible for creating Facebook but the company today is not the one that they love. It's not the one that they built. It's not the one that they're proud of. And we have seen this huge clash from the executive team, from folks like Mark Zuckerberg, and the people who are actually building the products and were responsible, really, for the creation of these.

And just perusing LinkedIn this morning, I have seen at least two folks posting viral posts that have since, you know, kind of exploded on the platform. Former Facebook employees now kind of acknowledging their resignation because they are not happy with the direction that the company is going in.

- Yeah, Melody, the fact that, you know, real quick, on "The Times" is interesting, just because their op ed page has been a source of difficulties, I guess, for the paper and journalists there. Some op eds promoting just conspiracies or inaccuracies as far as science goes, and this one seems to really just cross a line, just beyond that.

But as far as Facebook goes, you look at something like Mark Zuckerberg, who, you know, has said in the past that he would have taken action on comments that elected leaders make that could drive violence. He specifically said he would make moves on that and take such posts down. And here we have an example of him kowtowing to President Trump because he's afraid of any kind of pushback.

And you know, Twitter made the move. Snapchat made the move. Snapchat yesterday discussed about how they weren't going to promote President Trump in Discover anymore.

And, you know, it's interesting to see how Facebook has tried to court conservative voices, specifically having sit-downs with them over accusations of conservative bias. There is none. There's-- you know, we haven't seen any evidence of such, and it doesn't make financial sense for companies to have a bias one way or the other because they want to draw in as many users as possible.

You know, this is just, kind of, on Zuckerberg's part-- I mean, a failure is kind of the easiest way to put it.

- Dan and Melody, I want to talk to you guys about recruiting. Because particularly in Silicon Valley-- let's leave "The Times" aside for a minute-- particularly in Silicon Valley, that's the competitive edge and it is fiercely competitive between tech companies there. Where do we get to a tipping point where this becomes a real problem for Facebook because it can't attract or retain talent because they see philosophical differences with the management of the company?

Dan, you want to weigh in first on this?

- Yeah, I mean, look. Facebook is, from an investor standpoint or from an employee standpoint, it's going be different. When you look at from an employee standpoint, you're going to say, well, I don't agree with what you're doing and I can just go down the road and get a great job at Google.

Google is a company-- don't get me wrong, Google has its own issues obviously-- but they have responded to employee issues. They pulled out of government contracts as far as AI goes over concerns from employees. They had abandoned their plans for a search engine for China after a lot of pushback from employees, as well as those in the government.

So I mean, look, if you're an employee at Facebook and you aren't happy with the way the company is going, you have myriad options. They are fighting to get you as an employee. You don't have to fight to work there if you are a high-enough-level developer. And I think, you know, that's something that we're going to continue to see, the kind of employee activism at these kinds of companies. It comes down to whether or not you agree with what the company that you work for is doing.