What news?
Oct 19th, 2007 by handolio
It’s easy to get wonderfully carried away with this whole internet news revolution thing. The argument for it goes something like this: the internet lowers the barriers to participation in the gathering, distribution and discussion of news, and makes information freely accessible to all.
There’s no doubt it’s happening. Consumers are today presented with a wider range of news sources and information than ever before, and therein lies the problem.
It would take some chutzpah to argue that television today, with however many hundred channels you can get, is better than television yesterday, with five. There are more repeats, more adverts, more celebrity talking head programs and more ‘reality’. There might be more good content out there, but it’s more dilute, and the audience has had to get better at finding it.
It’s pretty much the same with internet news. There are ‘traditional’ outlets such as the Telegraph, Guardian or BBC, agencies such as Reuters, corporate and corporate-sponsored sites such as those for which Charlie and I write, independent sites and bloggers - not to mention various social media such as forums, bookmarking sites and social networks.
It’s fairly safe to assume that, free from bias or not, the big sites have proper editorial processes and policies. A good corporate news site must wear its affiliations in the open.
But how do you judge the objectivity and accuracy of a blogger you’ve happened upon through a search engine? I could be in the pay of the devil for all you know - I do work for a marketing company, after all.
A little help?
I’ve previously argued that, exposed to this mass of content and authors, the reader has had to get better at the snap judgements that help them know how much to trust a site. It’s a lot to ask, though, and certain authorities could be doing more to help.
I’m thinking particularly of Google News, after receiving an alert this week linking to a story on Easier.com. Easier is a site that shows what happens when lowered barriers to participation allow marketers to set up a website that can publish advertorial under the guise of news. If that sounds harsh, this is the story.
I have a problem with sites like Easier being listed alongside genuine news sources, but Google doesn’t seem to. There’s astonishingly little in its publisher guidelines about objectivity, neutrality or anything else that defines news, other than a requirement not to “solely promote your own organization”.
Did you see Charlie Brooker’s special on TV news the other day? It had a segment from the “Power of Nightmares” guy (can’t remember the name, too lazy to Google it) about the rise and fall of TV news. It was suitably scathing about the ridiculous trend towards “your news” and user-generated tosh etc - although the finest televised critique of TV news remains the Simpsons episode about Kidz Newz
I think the danger of Google News is that it’s news, as selected (and therefore with an agenda set by) a corporation that has no understanding of, well, news. The results can be bonkers - I had to write a press release the other week (don’t ask) and it appeared up there in the middle of the stories it prompted. If I was a PR, would that count as coverage? Possibly.
The question is, is getting a skewed news agenda from Google really any worse than getting it from, say, the London freesheets / Daily Hell? I’d suggest not. If anything, the utterly crazy spray of results from dozens of bizarre sources that Google produces might be less damaging than a focused Murdoch/Mail/insert-publisher-you-don’t-like-here agenda.
A good point, though I’m not sure if a lack of selectivity that stems from a lack of editorial expertise quite counts as an agenda. It certainly seems an accidental one, at worst.
I think the root of my frustration is that Google News is, if not already, clearly going to become a really important way for people to distribute and find news. There should be somebody in there with a damn good understanding of what news is.
Perhaps it’s something we can look forward to as the service develops and gains popularity. Anyone know how many journalists there are at Google News, and where Google expects to take it next?
Tamsin also recommended Screenwipe. I should catch up with it, but I hardly ever watch telly even if it is Charlie Brooker.