Press falls for another claim that Facebook is destroying the economy

The meme goes on…

Over at the usually reliable CNET they’ve done a one-source story about how companies’ are limiting employees’ access to the site.

Half of businesses are restricting employees’ access to social-networking site Facebook, due to concerns about productivity and security. According to research by security company Sophos, 43 percent of workers polled said their employer blocks Facebook access completely. A further 7 percent said access is restricted depending on whether it’s required for a particular job.

So far 51 fools, I mean respected journalism outlets have run this story or variations on it. A random look at four of those 51 stories showed NONE quoting anyone except an executive with the clearly unbiased company Sophos.

Best line of bad journalism comes from the alleged newspaper The Telegraph: “ LloydsTSB, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have reportedly banned the site …”

REPORTEDLY?!?! That’s short hand for we didn’t make any phone calls to try and confirm it. The moon is reportedly made of green cheese. I am reportedly Queen Marie of Romania.

God, I hope TechDirt is going to redeem journalism on this one too. They’re my only hope at this point.

If anyone needs me I’m spending the rest of the day expunging anything to do with journalism from my resume.

BTW, Raw Feed has a nice example of a similar phenomenon happening with coverage of pollution in Beijing (which nicely ties up all of the day’s posts — wasn’t that good of me?). Media reports opposing results on Beijing smog.