Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Takes A Stab At NYT Over 'Surfboard' Coverage But Ignores The Elephant In The Room

Facebook Inc FB CEO Mark Zuckerburg took a potshot at the New York Times Co NYT on Tuesday.

What Happened: In a tongue-in-cheek post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said, that it was “one thing for the media to say false things about my work, but it's crossing the line to say I'm riding an electric surfboard when that video clearly shows a hydrofoil that I'm pumping with my own legs.”

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Zuckerberg was referring to a New York Times article published Tuesday that touched on “Project Amplify,” — an effort hatched up in an internal meeting in January that purportedly uses Facebook’s News Feed to showcase positive stories about the social network.

The Times noted that, since the January meeting, Facebook began a “multipronged effort” to change the narrative surrounding the social media giant by distancing Zuckerberg from scandals, reducing outsiders’ access to internal data, and by “burying a potentially negative report about its content and increasing its own advertising to showcase its brand.”

“Rather than addressing corporate controversies, Mr. Zuckerberg’s posts have recently featured a video of himself riding across a lake carrying an American flag, with messages about new virtual reality and hardware devices,” wrote the Times journalists Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel. 

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Why It Matters: Zuckerberg did not address Project Amplify in his post about the Times article.

Zuckerberg’s adventures on the hydrofoil-like contraption took place on July 4 and were accompanied by John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as background music in the video he shared. At the time, several Twitter users noted that it seemed like an attempt to improve the Facebook CEO's public image.

Facebook found itself amidst controversy after internal researchers found that the company-owned Instagram social network is harmful to teenage girls.

The company’s Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg responded to a Wall Street Journal report on the mental health impact of Instagram on teenage girls.

The Journal citing internal Facebook documents noted that 32% of teen girls “felt bad about their bodies” and said the photo-sharing platform made the issue worse.

“At the heart of this series is an allegation that is just plain false: that Facebook conducts research and then systematically and willfully ignores it if the findings are inconvenient for the company,” Clegg said on the WSJ coverage.

Price Action: On Tuesday, Facebook shares closed 0.5% higher at $357.48 in the regular session and fell 0.22% in the after-hours trading.