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Feature:News in the Slashdot Decade
from the stuff-to-read dept.
The following was written by Slashdot Reader Matthew Priestley, who,
despite his email address, is a pretty cool guy
Honest News in the Slashdot Decade
In this paper, we
discuss the nature of biased and unbiased news in terms of 'trust decisions',
using the cryptographic sense of that phrase. We examine the biases in modern
media and identify their causes. Two examples of community news services are
examined: Slashdot.org, and FreeRepublic.com. (0)
From this analysis we derive a model of community news.
Disclaimer: The author of this paper works for Microsoft, but his opinions may not be the opinions of Microsoft. In fact, they aren't. The author hereby declares that nobody important at Microsoft is even aware of his existence, and that he is about as significant to Bill Gates as a single bacterium in your colon is significant to the weather in France.
0 Introduction
There is a malaise of distrust among
news consumers. In recent years the number of news outlets has dwindled due to
mergers and attrition, leaving information consumers with a scrawny range of
choice. As the global quantity of information grows at a jaw-dropping rate,
individuals increasingly despair of their ability to filter the news without
aid from massive corporations.
Almost half of adults have little or no trust in media agencies (1), yet almost all delegate news collection to companies they will condemn if asked. When consumers knowingly act against their own interests, a form of coercion must be in operation. In the case of news, this coercion is a stranglehold enjoyed by media companies over filtered information. If their services are not accepted, the consumer sinks in a sea of data. In a world in which no one can process all the news and still enjoy a full life, having all information is as useless as having no information at all.
1 Nature and weakness of trust decisions
The
selection of a news-filtering agency resembles what is called in cryptology a
'trust decision'. Briefly, a trust decision is a choice made by the user to
validate another user's digital certificate. By assigning trust to the
certificate, any content signed by that certificate becomes, in a limited
sense, trustworthy. (2)
It is burdensome to evaluate the trustworthiness of every certificate, and a typical user lacks the expertise to investigate each exhaustively. For this reason, most users choose to trust a Certification Authority or CA, a central agency empowered to make trust decisions on their behalf. By endowing a single node with the power to filter certificates, the user is spared this chore. (3)
This process is analogous to the decision to accept news from an established information outlet. It would require an unreasonable effort and scads of time for any individual to audit all the news. Apart from sheer volume, appraising facts often requires background familiarity. Sources must be checked, viewpoints solicited, and impact considered. It becomes clear that this is no task for a person who hopes to conduct, for example, a life on the side. Hence the necessity of the trust decision.
Due to the exhausting claims of evaluating news, authority to filter information must be delegated.
2 Sources of bias in modern media
2.1 Opinion
pollution
That trust decisions are subject to predation should be
apparent. The most evident form of bias is opinion pollution, in which the
subjective feelings of a reporter taint the news. Such bias may either
systemic, or it may be the fault of "rogue" reporters, or both.
This form of bias is trivial to establish. In a July 8th article discussing a verdict against tobacco companies, the New York Times dwells on the volume of damning evidence presented by the plaintiffs. The deformities of the smokers are described, and the article drops a helpful tip about joining the suit. (4) Covering precisely the same event, the Wall Street Journal scrupulously avoids discussing the smokers, save to describe their organizers as 'flamboyant'. The spectre of a flooded court system and billions in costs is raised multiple times, and the guilty verdict categorized as a legal 'aberration'. (5)
This form of trust violation can be characterized in two ways. If the tolerance for personal beliefs in the news is not widespread, but isolated to a few reporters, then officials of the corporation have delegated their authority unwisely. An organization that is otherwise trustworthy will eventually correct this error. If the corruption runs throughout, however, then the consumer's initial trust decision was poor. In either event, ongoing opinion pollution can only be sustained by broad organization-wide consensus on the value of certain ideas.
Opinion pollution is a trait of homogeneous groups.
2.2
Advertising revenue and corporate ownership
Often overlooked as a
source of bias is the murky relationship between news providers and
advertisers. The age-old subscription model has fallen by the wayside, unable
to compete with advertiser-funded services that appear to offer information for
free. (6)
One fallacy is that advertising flows toward high readership, rewarding popularity with success. In reality, corporations are not interested in buyers, not readers. The Daily Herald, a worker's paper in 1960's England, boasted a readership of 4.7 million the year of its demise - nearly double that of the Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian combined. (7) But the Herald's readers were demi-socialists, and failed to support the very businesses keeping their paper alive. The advertising money melted away.
A look at subscription income and advertising income emphasizes the dwindling importance of readers. A copy of The Washington Post costs as little as 24 cents a day. By contrast, one inch of black-and-white advertisement in the paper commands $257.55. (8) Economically, it would be more prudent for the Post to alienate 1000 readers than one business buying a daily inch of print. If the lost readership were confined to non-buyers, advertising rates would not even have to drop. When profit per advertiser squashes profit per consumer, the business of advertiser-funded information outlets becomes not the sale of information, but the sale of a receptive audience.
The situation is aggravated when a large corporation owns the news-filtering outlet. Most fans of TV news are unaware ABC is owned by Disney, NBC by GE with investment from Microsoft, and CBS by Westinghouse Electric. Stories critical to these interests are treated gingerly in the news. (9)
Reliance on advertising or corporate ownership selects for news that is business-friendly. High readership is no exemption.
2.3 Feeder
authority
Any reader who has attempted to wrest information from the
government is aware of its inertia. Similarly, the PR departments of businesses
are known for their unhelpful volubility. In the first case the problem is
information deficit, in the second it is disinformation glut, but ultimately
the predicament is the same.
The situation is no different in a modern newsroom. Effective reporters are those who have established personal relationships with 'sources' inside various institutions who feed them privileged information. These reporters are superior information gatherers because they may ask questions that typically are rebuffed.
Without the goodwill of their 'feeders', even competent journalists drown in a sea of flack. Should an information gatherer alienate an important feeder, the gatherer is instantly severed from a pool of developing information. Pains are taken to ensure feeders are pleased with the treatment of their comments in published accounts. (10) This creates an unhealthy environment for the analysis of news. If an information outlet were to criticize the statements of a feeder, or if fallacies or lies were exposed in the feeder's reasoning, the potential effect on the outlet would be calamitous. This allows the feeder to make use of information outlets as occasional distributors of propaganda, knowing that refusal is unlikely.
Information from a small number of feeders may be propagandized.
3 News distribution over the Internet
Slashdot.org and FreeRepublic.com are representatives of a new class of news filter. While using these sites, consumers alter the fundamental structure of their trust decision. Rather than inhabiting a descending tree, in which trust is derived from progressively higher and fewer nodes, a Slashdotter or Freeper distributes their trust. In a distributed trust model, each consumer inhabits a single node in a formless but highly connected graph. Central authority is weak, participants are anonymous, and all nodes perform small amounts of voluntary labor.
3.1 Slashdot.org
Recently thrown mainstream as a gathering spot for Linux advocates, Slashdot.org has a large and devoted following of geeks and technophiles. Interestingly, because of its adherence to transparency and peer review, Slashdot has evolved a news system that defeats several of the biases described above. Slashdot is the conceptual descendent of the Internet newsgroup and the old-timer's BBS. Members log in to the web board and select one or more current items to discuss, then post their reactions.
3.1.1 Successes of the Slashdot model Participants on Slashdot are only identifiable if they wish to be. Widespread use of aliases insulates participants from real-world reprisal - a Slashdotter may criticize the government, their employer, or other feeders with small risk. Handle-use also renders a state of meritocracy on Slashdot. Comments and topic submissions are judged by their own merits, since little is known about their real-world source. Aliases grow trusted in the forum as a result of their owner's contributions. Deprecated aliases have only themselves to blame.
Members submit topics on Slashdot, and those with promise are posted to the forum. By distributing the labor of reporting, the process of information collection becomes inexpensive, and the likelihood of discovering important news increases - much like the 'Have you seen this child?' ads on milk cartons. (11) When the system requests voluntary labor, it is limited to tasks costing only a few mouse clicks. The decision of what is 'newsworthy' is also simplified, since an audience member has provided the item. If each registered Slashdot member contributed only 1 minute per day, their efforts would sum to 1083 work-hours of labor - absolutely free.
Relinquishing trust to anonymous lurkers appears foolhardy, but as randomness grows, so does quality. The web demographic is a straw poll in the worst sense of the term (12), but there are tide pools of demographic validity if groups are narrowly defined. When a site achieves a certain level of notoriety, Slashdot for example, a cross-section of users may fairly be said to represent its supporting community, in this case idealistic geeks. An information consumer is not interested in topics useful to the average person; rather they are interested in what is useful to people like themselves.
No opinion is authoritative until it runs the Slashdot gauntlet. Members comment on topics, share experiences, and take potshots at sloppy reasoning. This is more egalitarian than the feedback model of magazines, TV, or books. In those cases, if a retort is even possible, it is run in the following issue, with no guarantee to reach the original audience. On Slashdot, user comments frequently upstage the 'official' news, and it is a testament to their quality that reading the primary source is often unnecessary. Because most topics excite a gamut of opinions, Slashdot defeats the threat of opinion pollution.
To tame dull or off-topic comments, Slashdot members are randomly empowered to moderate the 'score' of remarks. Moderators are chosen by the system with a preference towards regular but not ubiquitous readers. Comments that gain the approbation of everyday participants gradually move up through statistical effects. Pointless comments sink into oblivion. Visitors to the forum may choose their own threshold of dependence on this ratings system. On Slashdot, the uniform opinions of classic information outlets are rare.
Finally, the scripts and HTML that run Slashdot are released to the community. This ensures, within reason, that the site truly operates as billed, as well as opening the code to all the benefits of open source.
3.1.2 Failings of the Slashdot model
Among its positive effects, anonymity damages credibility. If Secretary of State Madaleine Albright posted a remark on technology export limitations, her opinion would be more significant than had 'DrDeath' typed precisely the same opinion. Validation of real-world credentials can be desirable. One solution would be to support either the S/MIME or PGP signing standards as a user option. A hash of important messages could be included with the post, thereby validating the identity of the signer. (13)
No Slashdot participant receives a handle until they submit an e-mail address to the Slashdot central authority. Those who do not may participate as 'Anonymous Cowards'. AC's suffer numerous disadvantages, not the least that their posts begin at a lower score. Though this distinction discourages meddling from non-regulars, it is risky. Regular members are no less anonymous or even cowardly than AC's, save that they have disclosed their private information to the Slashdot central authority. This makes criticism of the authority more difficult, since critical remarks are safe only as an AC post from a lab computer, which is immediately scored down.
There is one departure on Slashdot from democracy. While consumers do submit the discussion topics, these are dropped into an administrative black box, unseen until a few emerge handpicked by the central authority. Inside the 'box', a small number of humans, vulnerable to self-interest, choose which of the topics will be news. In theory, the authority could even replace submitted topics with its own. A better system would be an open one, moderated in the same manner as user remarks. Along with their ration of remark-points, moderators would be given a supply of topic-points, which could be spent on proposed topics in a pool. Users could set topic thresholds in the same manner that they set thresholds for remarks. This method would be self-policing and eliminate tedious work for the central authority. (Update: 07/16 01:15 by CT : See the Slashdot FAQ for the reason that I've decided not to do this)
Slashdot is funded by banner advertisements, and on 6/29/99 announced that it had been acquired by Andover.net. (14) While there is little danger of the various Linux distros exerting pressure as yet on Slashdot, and while Andover rarely appeared on Slashdot in the past, nonetheless these developments cast a shadow on the impartiality of the community forum. Is it less likely that a story criticizing Sony will be run when an advertisement for the Sony AIBO adorns the top banner? What would become of stories damaging to Andover? Members should be alert for signs of conflicting interest.
3.2 FreeRepublic.com
Similarly evolved, although less highly automated, is FreeRepublic.com, a forum for the exchange of conservative commentary. FreeRepublic is similar to Slashdot in appearance and general design. We will focus on their differences.
3.2.1 Successes of the FreeRepublic model
FreeRepublic's most notable trait is the freedom members enjoy in topic selection. Power is so far in their hands that every member may post any topic they choose, resulting in dozens of discussed topics per day. A true distributed trust network has no single point of entry. Since the number of daily articles is finite, any given node in a sea of nodes has negligible influence. Individuals may be bought or coerced, but since the merits of each contribution are peer-reviewed and peer-diluted, successful corruption must be hugely widespread. The resources needed to influence a majority of users would be prohibitive, and only dubiously worthwhile. Once accomplished, the forum would cease to serve the needs of valid members and would naturally dissolve. Attempts to corrupt distributed news forums are by nature self-defeating.
FreeRepublic reaps no funding from advertisement or corporate ownership. The site is fed by out-of-pocket donations from participants. Though it should be noted that FreeRepublic's supporting community stereotypically has more disposable income than the average netizen, even so the site is accountable to none save its members. When the object of a news outlet is the aggregation of money, it should be unremarkable when money supersedes the pursuit of information. But in a community forum, participants have no aim other than valuable and convenient news.
Participants on FreeRepublic meet physically, organize in chapters, and crusade in the real world to accomplish their aims. There is little risk to anonymity, since there is no need to divulge onscreen handles. Provided chapters are small and independent, the inevitable discussion of principles will not even dampen diversity of opinion, which could expose the forum to opinion pollution. Participants also leave the meetings with a sense of community, which increases their voluntary labor.
3.2.2 Failings of the FreeRepublic model
Although a blessing, complete freedom of topic selection is also a curse. At times of peak activity, two successive clicks on Refresh may result in two completely different topic lists. Crackpots frequently post and their topics slide off the page untouched by regulars. There is much duplication as news breaks. Most topics receive fewer than twenty comments, reducing the effects of peer-dilution and peer-review. All these problems could be resolved if FreeRepublic were to transition to the scoring-based topic selection approach recommended previously.
FreeRepublic has no moderation method for comments, and consequently all remarks carry equal weight. In its absence, opinions win by volume or position near the top of the remark list rather than insight or appeal to the median qualities of the community. Corruption of an unmoderated forum is trivial given fifty aliases and sufficient time.
On FreeRepublic, community participants are not permitted to comment or post discussion topics unless they are logged on. This is an extreme case of Slashdot's Anonymous Coward dilemma. No contribution can be made to the forum without being noted by the FreeRepublic central authority. There is no guarantee the central authority will not terminate or diminish the accounts of those who criticize its practices.
Finally, FreeRepublic is closed source. Though the site is more static than Slashdot, what scripts it has are not disclosed to the forum. Members must take it on trust that no back doors lurk in the code.
4 Issues in Internet news distribution
4.1 The trouble with enthusiasm
One trait of both Slashdot and FreeRepublic is that their populations contain a percentage of zealots. This fact attracts the attention of non-members and ensures the continued participation of long-standing ones. While allegiance to a specific viewpoint is in no way an exclusionary criterion on Slashdot or FreeRepublic, most users share a common opinion on a few controversial issues. This may reflect the fact that contentious topics generate the most passionate interest.
Regrettably, this bond introduces a capacity for bias. Most information processed on a trust graph will lie outside the emotional boundaries, allowing peer-review and peer-dilution to ensure honest news analysis. But when discussion touches on a 'hot button' topic, rampant uniformity of opinion eliminates these safeguards.
FreeRepublic may safely be termed incapable of objective thought when the topic of President Clinton is broached. One recent post discussing Clinton's attendance at the World Cup bore the helpful keywords 'CLINTON RAPIST EVIL SLEAZY TRAITOR'. (15) Similarly, the high quality of discourse on Slashdot disintegrates when Microsoft enters the headlines. Both communities may be absolutely correct in their opinions on these topics, but the mere fact of consensus mimics the effects of corruption and degrades the community information filter. Whether it is desirable or even possible to generate a community forum without this sort of bias is a question for further debate.
4.2 Overcoming feeder bias
Although incisive analysis may overcome the flaws in a poorly written news article, community forums are ultimately limited by their feeders. These feeders are not usually primary sources, except in cases where significant documents are available online. Far more common is the linking of news articles from established information filtering corporations. The question arises whether community news efforts can surmount partiality on the part of the original reporters.
The answer appears to be yes. When CPU-maker AMD recently released comparisons between its chips and those of rival Intel, Slashdot was quick to dissect the biases in presentation and supply the necessary omitted background. (16) However, it should be noted that processors are a topic enjoying high familiarity among the technical elite who visit the site. Had the discussion been on the political condition of Nicaragua, results would be sketchy at best. Fortunately, community information forums are inherently unlikely to encounter this dilemma. Since the group as a whole selects topics, discussions lying outside the expertise of the majority are rare. A more difficult question is this: will community news replace traditional news outlets, or merely supplement them?
5 Conclusion
Community information filters are a novel approach to news. Trading on the principles of self-interest and distributed trust, they levy the expertise of thousands into producing honest, cheap daily news. In a world where command of information is rapidly becoming the root of institutional power, distributed trust graphs refocus information upon the needs of the citizen. While they remain in a state of infancy, the rise of sites such as Slashdot and FreeRepublic herald the demise of traditional information flows. We have entered the Slashdot decade, and only time will judge our success.
6 References
(0) http://www.slashdot.org, http://www.freerepublic.com
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990108.asp
(2) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/4-1-3-11.html
(3) E.g. http://www.thawte.com
(4) "Tobacco Industry Loses First Phase of Broad Lawsuit", New York Times, 6/8/99
(5) "A 'Class' Trial Finds Tobacco Firms Liable; Big Payments May Follow", Wall Street Journal, 6/8/99
(6) Cable is an exception. The means of distribution in cable are monopoly-owned, preserving cable from direct competition with TV.
(7) Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, p15, [cf.]
(8) As of July 1999, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guide/sub/sub.htm, http://adsite.washpost.com/rates/retail/fullrun.html
(9) http://www.fair.org/media-woes/media-woes.html
(10) E.g. http://independent.org/tii/content/events/f_macarth.html
(11) http://www.missingkids.org
(12) http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide
(13) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/2-2-2.html
(14) "Slashdot Acquired by Andover.Net"
(15) "Clinton hopes for soccer diplomacy"
(16) "Athlon Benchmarks Out"
Free /. from advertising bias! (HHOS) (Score:4)
I'm worried about the rush to fund Internet information sources from advertising---it'll end up heading the same way TV has: it's a medium to sell consumers to producers, with the content a distant second, useful only as a lure for the consumers.
Micro-payments would be an ideal way to avoid this problem, but the mechanisms to ensure reliability and anonymity, though extant, are pitifully slow in being implemented, and are further hindered by the absence of standards. I'd gladly pay, say, USD 0.0001 (a hundredth of a cent for the math-impaired) for any web page I'm served, so long as it's totally transparent to me. There are plenty of sites out there that get much less than that (read: zero). Unfortunately that's not going to happen soon.
So, how about those sites to whom I'd pay significantly more than that, maybe even an order of magnitude more, like Slashdot?
Anonymous micro-payments are good for surfing, but when I've found someplace really worthwhile, why shouldn't it offer advertising-free pages to me in exchange for cash? Are you listening, Rob?
How much do you get in advertising revenue for my presence? I bet I'd pay much more than that to rid my pages of ads. All you need to do is offer a, say USD 5.00--10.00 annual subscription (is this in the right ballpark?) to volunteers. I give you a credit-card number, you bill me annually, and when I log on, voila---no ads. If enough think this is worthwhile, you could get rid of the ads for everyone. I wouldn't mind subsidizing a few dozen ACs and free riders to get a /. which couldn't care less about the feelings of anyone other than its readers.
Of course, this raises the specter of /. dominated by the paying customers, but keep the price down, and anybody can play. Not too bad!
Thanks for a great article. Tell Jon Katz to reflect for a while on what makes this one so good :-).
Another great press accuracy resource - fair.org (Score:4)
CBS and Westinghouse (Score:3)
CBS is no longer owned by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Four or five years ago new management at Westinghouse bought CBS. Westinghosue Electric Corporation was renamed CBS a couple years back and then CBS proceeded to sell off all the industrial companies that made up Westinghouse.
Westinghouse is no more.
Tom
Two corrections (Score:4)
I believe that the place this has been most completely explored is in the study of financial markets. A good introductory book is, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The long and the short of it is that the average consistently does better than the participants. Which is why very few managed funds manage to match, let alone exceed, the performance of dumb indexed ones. (The portion that do is explainable by dumb luck.) Of course this fact depends strongly on the nature of what a market is, but still
Eric Raymond's thesis that "All bugs are shallow" with OSS development is another example of the same phenomena. He has documented that it works in software development. But does it work in news? Well that is another question.
My belief is that with open discussion between relatively rational people, the initial response is meaningless but the follow up over the next several days can get into a positive feedback cycle resulting in a broad agreement on the events which are beyond the abilities of all but (possibly) a few participants. How? When it works right it is just like the OSS model! The fact is that what practically anyone notices gets communicated. Significant facts get reinforced. Insignificant facts get rebutted and disappear. Then "prominent people" come up with (and refine) statements distilling the best of the ideas. Those get communicated out, circulate, and a consensus is arrived at and generally communicated that is beyond the ability of any one person in the group to have generated.
Don't believe me? Well let me consider an important news event. Mindcraft. (Ick.) If you go back and look the initial response was disbelief, flames, the usual. However within a few days of the original tests there were official rebuttals to the tests floating around with detailed breakdowns of the things that were done wrong. Then as more tests were done, the same pattern was followed. Stop and think for a moment about everything you know about what was wrong with the final public Microsoft tests. OK, perhaps you personally could tell that the networks and servers were crazy for the need. Everybody knows that stability and uptime were ignored. But how many of us knew, or even had the resources to figure out, that Windows NT had changed their TCP-IP stack to be multi-threaded? Which of us could, as Jeremy Allison did, point out the tremendous difference for SAMBA between NT and Win9x clients? How many of us are in a position to do as ct did and run tests varying the parameters ever so slightly and really demonstrate that NT was only a clear win for serving static pages out of RAM. And so on and so forth.
In short many of us, myself certainly included, now know a summary analysis of what was wrong with the Mindcraft tests that is beyond the abilities of any individual to produce or easily verify. I call that pretty darned impressive.
Of course, that takes time and feedback, which the short life-time of posts on
Oh, yeah. I promised two corrections. The other? A straight line from a to b is a path of minial distance from the one to the other, which by definition must be a geodesic. So non-Euclidean geometries don't change the fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, they merely change a lot of things that we thought we knew about straight lines.
Cheers,
Ben
Rebuttal (Score:4)
This article initially impressed me as conservative claptrap, yearning for a day when the traditional media was less liberal and more representative. The hapless Matthew Priestley guises this fundamental complaint in a haphazard analysis of Slashdot.
Slashdot is anything but traditional--something that should be apparent to everyone reading it. Making comparisons between the New York Times and Slashdot turn Priestley's criticisms to non sequtors. Slashdot is not the New York Times. It does not suffer from "rogue" reporters in the same sense. Further, it does not claim to be a heterogenous group. Slashdot's homogeniality is emblazoned for all to see on the top of the page, "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
Another striking feature of the article is its confusion of "authority" with "credibility." Priestley notes that "no opinion is authoritative until it runs the Slashdot gauntlet." Yet, in the next section, he criticizes the anonymous and user submitted comments -- which he argues are the same thing, as DrDeath is just as anonymous as Anonymous Coward -- for destroying possible credibility. He contends that it would be a good thing to have Madeline Albright's comments receive a higher score than DrDeath or some AC.
John Katz, the celebrated columnist of Slashdot, is popular because of what he writes, not because of who he is. The same should be and is true for Slashdot's users. If Madeline Albright has something to say, it should be judged on the content.
If content and source are intertwined, this approach becomes problematic. Clearly if Madeline Albright said that we had just bombed the Balkans that should be different from if DrDeath said we just bombed the Balkans. Slashdot has no method of dealing with this. But come the day when the Secretary of State wants to post a comment, CmdrTaco will find a way to verify his or her identity.
Success of counter-points on /. (Score:3)
There may be 50 posts articulating more-or-less the same arguments against software patents. Only one or two of these makes it above three. A single dissident will make a well-written post for The Other Side and--almost invariably--it gets moderated up three or four times.
Inspite of the fact that we are a (fairly) homogenous group, I think the combination of open discussion and moderation keeps us honest about our biases and exposes us to other schools of thought.
The media's centrist bias (Score:3)
That is: They are happy to point out instances where our major institutions cause harm (a politician is corrupt, a corporation dumps toxic waste, a doctor sexually abuses a patient, and so on). However, these are almost always treated as crimes done by aberrant individuals, as special-case failures of the system, or as signs that the institution needs some minor adjustment. The media are extremely reluctant to suggest that any of these institutions (government, corporations, health care) causes so much harm that it needs to be reorganized in a significant way.
What happened to truth? (Score:5)
How about truth: something objective, verifiable and valuable? The loss of the ideal -- even if not completely attainable -- of objective reporting in favor of advocacy does a disservice to both journalism and truth. When traditional news media loses its desire to be objective, they lose trust and someone else takes over. This article is only a snapshot of something that has been going on for ages. The WSJ on July 15 had an excellent editorial on the New New Journalism that gives a good historical perspective.
In the 1830s, "staid newspapers" in NYC were attached to political parties. Enter the "penny newspapers": raw, colorful and independent. They settled down and became less sensational, but retained their nonpartisanship. In the 1890s, it was the "former pennies" that were being upstaged by newer papers, but the ensuing debate strengthened restraint and accuracy.
Today the poor state of the press calls for alternatives. The Internet models now, alas, poorly serves the cause of truth. Internet journalist Matt Drudge only claims an accuracy rate of 80%, for example. Peer review only works if all facts are in front of the peers, as in source code. Poorly informed peers make for poor reviews, as has already been pointed out. An orchestrated herd of anonymous cowards can easily bias the atmosphere. And how useful is having 200 comments to a casual browser?
The simple fact is that nothing substitutes a good editor. Slashdot's articles are useful, as another poster pointed out, because they care largely links to other news sources. Slashdot is already benefitting from traditional editorial control. Its only original content -- the Slashdot Effect and followup comments -- are rather lacking in quality. We still rely on traditional journalists for much of Slashdot's useful content. What do we want to see? As the Mindich's WSJ editorial puts it,
they are less partisan, more detached, more accurate. They understand the uses and misuses of balance. They appreciate the difference between opinion--their own in particular--and truth. Unlike self-styled Web journalists, with no distance between their thumb and the "enter" key, responsible journalists have publishers, editors, ethics and professional reputations built over time. In short, responsible journalists have better filters.
It is regrettable that many journalists fall short. Nevertheless, this is something that the new Internet models do not address. They only allow us to hear what we want to hear.
An aside: I am puzzled by what the article considers bias. Is the WSJ really biased in raising the issue of legal costs and a "legal aberration"? The NYT too said that the case is unusual and that Florida courts would be flooded.
Traditional news sources will not disappear (Score:3)
Traditional information flows will change, but traditional information sources will not disappear. The community information filters would be slower and less efficient without theses sources. For example, most of the news posted on Slashdot are links to some of the traditional news sources. Calling Slashdot a "community information filter" implies that it is usually a filter, not a source.
But to some extent, the community-driven sites are also a source of information (the comments are often more informative than the original article). They could eventually become the dominant source of information, although the transition will be slow and there are some pitfalls on the way. One of the dangers is that the communities may be disconnected from other sources of information. Sometimes, important news come from places that are outside the community's focus, yet they have an impact on the community. Having some members subscribed to some "generalist" sources of information (that may be biased) ensures that the important news will eventually reach the community.
That model could be extended to a world in which most of the information comes from community-driven sources, as long as each community has enough members participating in other communities or collecting the information on their own. But without the traditional news flows, that model is only viable for (very) large communities. Or small ones that are mostly spin-offs from larger ones (thus relying on larger communities as their source of information).
Bias and Target Audience (Score:3)
News outlets like Slashdot will continue to grow. It's like a book club. People get together to discuss a common topic which they all understand to a certain degree. We can dissagree about key points and voice our opinions in a productive manner.
The other key point in this article that is not well fleshed out is bias. To most, bias seems to be something that is negative. It is not. The key to understand news from a particular source is to identify its' bias. Penn Jillette wrote an article about this in PC Computing a few years ago. He wrote about how important it is to identify what the bias in a story is. Once you figure that out, the true meaning of the story is revealed.
Take Slashdot for example. The community that reads and participates is pro-Linux. Therefore, a fair amount of anti-Microsoft news will appear. I'm not saying that is bad. It's just part of the bias of Slashdot and its' readers. No one would expect to find a detailed analasis of why Microsoft is great here.
Bias is a useful tool. It helps to explain why an article or comment is written rather than just the facts. By doing so, it is easier to identify what the true facts are.
public moderation (Score:3)
Public moderation is a great thing, and I believe it would be improved by having more of it. The original posts themselves could be moderated (scored based on number of quality posts? scored directly by readers?). Slashdot would benefit from letting everyone moderate all the time, with the exception of their own posts and follow-ups.
But, we will always want bias. Slashdot would not be slashdot if it weren't Rob picking the posts. The NYTimes would not be....etc
One point to remember in considering bias - I can read both newspapers, read multiple web sites, and I think that is often overlooked.
Re:Free /. from advertising bias! (HHOS) (Score:4)
The question is to what extent you get in bed with advertisers. Is all money good money? Is money from Microsoft ok? What about the Tobacco Barons? What about the KKK? Where do you draw the line? Can you turn one away? Could you be sued for doing so?
What if they want to pay you a lot of money? What if they wouldn't pay you a lot of money if your stories put a bad light on them? Remember what happened with the MSNBC reporter who was covering the MS-DOJ trial. He was fired.
Can you survive without advertising? Is it better to do so? If going without advertising has an impact on the quality of your publication, where do you draw the line?
Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, wrote that ``Contempt, rather than celebration, is the proper response to advertising and the system that makes it possible.'' Pervasive advertising to captive audiences has certainly gone from bad to worse in the last few years, not just in this medium but everywhere. Yet those who sip from the teat of money, especiall free spamvert money, are addicted far worse than any cocaine user ever was.
I regret that I offer no solution.
Fine line between Target Audience and Inbred Opini (Score:4)
While the
/. is an encouraging model of open discourse, and even so its partisan leanings (in aggregate) are clear for all to see.
More troubling are nakedly political sites ie the Consertive site mentioned in the article. The explosion of the Internet has allowed rabid dogmas to flourish, freed from critical analysis that restricted fora of the pre-wired age required. News gatherers take the step one further, as they allow and encourage 'real-world' events that support a particular ideology to be sampled, discussed and internalized in isolation without context in the greater culture. This allows us all to build unreconcilable 'true' pictures of culture that clash when rubbed against those outside that filtered embrace.
I posit that the internet, and specifically this agregation of limited world-views can ultimately lead to a more contentious, less consentual and increasingly isolated society.
For all their inherent biases and corporate corruption, traditional news services were more successful in keeping a cultural perspective alive through reporting diversity. Or at least the majority culture, which, while in some ways despicable still encourages a common touchstone over segregated enclaves of unassailable thought.
But anyway, I like geek stuff, so I'll still read
JJMcC