P2P News Syndication? 266
Buggernut writes "According to an article at BBC, news may be the next major item to be passed around through P2P networks, thereby escaping the grasp of the censors' attempts to control the spread of forbidden information."
The problem isn't censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is lack of attention and publicity. Mainstream sources cover mainstream things because that's what the mainstream wants: it's what sells. While stories are sometimes neglected due to their being taboo, I'd say the main obstacle is lack of interest. The stories may be taboo at CNN, but they're probably being covered elsewhere. It's just the elsewhere (Indymedia, foreign sources, what-have-you) is unpopular: people aren't interested.
A P2P news network might ironically solve that problem, though, as it would likely get a fair amount of press in and of itself.
web (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One Word: (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, for all their faults I'm finding weblogs of various sorts more directly valuable than TV news (too politically charged and beholden to advertisters to be truly objective) AND print news (too late, and too beholden to advertisers to rock the boat).
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:credibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
P2P news doesn't really seem to have that same trust value. Personally I am happy with the Guardian newspaper in the UK to generally get things right. It is their job to go out and read stories from around the world and present the facts to me in a way that I feel is relatively objective. I know they like (think it's their job) to screw the british government so I take that into account.
I can't see how p2p would be any better. I would just get a massive influx of information that I don't have time to sift through. News syndicates not only do the sifting job for us, but they hopefully do it in a trustworthy fashion.
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2, Insightful)
Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
With P2P you just have no clue what you are getting. It might be true, might not be. If you've seen the story before then you could be sure that it was true, but that would defeat the purpose of news- reading stories you haven't read before.
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
to be anonymous. I want them to be accountable. A reputation tied to public keys
is what we need. I suppose an anonymous news reporter could eventually
build up a reputation as credible. That would be tough.
(The public key thing was discussed above, but seemed pertinent here.)
Re:credibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most news reporters still like to think of themselves as objective seekers of the truth - but they also know what is "appropriate" or "practical" to talk about and what "crosses the line". This is the real ghost in the machine - the unspoken areas of omission. They're often pretty critical to understanding context.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you have compared a couple of news sources, you learn pretty quick how they slant their story's. So, even if it isn't the whole story, you will at least have a general idea of what was omitted or skewed based on that source's leanings.
If your news comes randomly from all over, you will never know the angle someone is pushing, nor ever the whole story.
Re:One Word: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
The day I take the likes of Indymedia to be an actual news site is the day I'll basing my opinions on the rants of the insane downtown homeless guy that sells magic wands.
P2P News = Urban Legends and Stupid people stories (Score:5, Insightful)
"Consider the source" means a lot when your trying to decide if a news story is believable. P2P removes the credibility. News will bubble to the top based on how many people share it.
P2P news will end up a worthless collection of lies and urban legends. Most of my family is already is part of such a network via email and no matter how many times I tell them otherwise they still spread the made up news stories, "HUGS" and prayers. I search out and refute almost every piece of crap my way, but no one sends that out 20 times to everyone they now.
What news needs is peer review and feedback. P2P in it's current form doesn't offer anything like that. You would end up with worthless POP news that people bother to keep and share. News needs a reputation system.
At least now I can see something comes from Fox News and know it's likely distorted, on P2P there is no trust at all.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you make an excellent point about the reliability of the major news services; they do the job better than I ever could, and since there are so many eyes looking at them they're subject to to at least some review.
I like the idea of P2P-style (which is to say decentralized) news sources, however, because on this side of the pond our mass-media outlets are becoming increasingly concentrated into the hands of an ever-shrinking pool of owners (I'm too hungry to find links, google for your own evidence - if I'm wrong I'll concede the point). Most of us still trust them, but when all of the radio stations, television stations, and newspapers are owned by the same three or four grandparent corporations (which may not have happened yet, but probably isn't too far away) their motives and their objectivity become increasingly suspect.
Particularly when those organizations do a lot of heavy lobbying to influence the government they are supposed to be watchdogging.
The Dalai LLama
...just my .02 - IANAJ (I am not a journalist)...
Re:One Word: (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't consider any news source trustworthy. I simply have to gather the "facts" from as many news sources as possible and then formulate an opinion. I may watch Fox (although I try to avoid doing so at all costs, the people I live with love it and I hear it in passing), CNN, and BBC News; read the Guardian, Le Monde, NY Times and The Daily Mail or Telegraph (UK) in order to examine an issue.
Each newspaper has an agenda. American journalism aims to be objective which makes for dull reading. I love to read the Guardian because of its blatantly left-leaning nature, for example. The agenda is always there, even in so-called "objective" news sources, it is just not as blatant.
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Freenet is not necessarily about anonymity. People could still post on Freenet using their full names and sign cryptographically. An equally important part of Freenet is censorship resistance. Once something has been posted, it cannot be taken offline as long as there is demand for the content. That's information availability, a cornerstone of democracy.
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's better than the current system, but it's really just a collectively identifying gossip mill. And while it'll be useful, the masses probably won't know about anyway.
Re:One Word: (Score:1, Insightful)
That's because what the US administration says is news. CNN doesn't claim it's the truth. They are only reporting what is said.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not an expert, but I know a thing or two about news.
Advertisers, be they print or broadcast, do not buy space or airtime based on the editorial leanings of the news desk. They buy space or airtime based simply on the number of people that will be exposed to that space or airtime. The measurement of those numbers is not exactly a science, but it is a finely honed craft. Numbers mean everything.
News outlets live and die by their audience numbers. An outlet with a broad reach or circulation will be more successful at securing advertising dollars than one with a smaller audience.
So, in essence, yes. News outlets must provide the coverage that the audience wants.
The thing about the audience, though, is that it's not homogenous. There are people out there who will read or watch just about anything. You want to deliver just-the-facts, objective news? There's an audience for that. You want to do deliver leftward-leaning analysis? There's an audience for that. You want to deliver rightward-leaning analysis? There's an audience for that. And if you want to deliver tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories or anti-establishment rants, there's an audience out there for that, too.
The idea that all news is the same because all news outlets are competing for the same audience is bogus. Multiple news outlets exist in print, on television, on the radio, and on the web precisely because they're all reaching for different audiences.
If a story gets ignored by the various major outlets, it's probably got nothing to do with business or audience share, and it's certainly got nothing to do with propaganda. The culture of news is such that the dissemination of propaganda is essentially impossible. Rather, if a story gets ignored, it's probably because it set off the bullshit detectors of desk editors everywhere and got bumped from the news budget accordingly.
Re:"Forbidden?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
Please recall that the two characters you mentioned were consummate liars whose only agenda was to gain power for themselves. An agenda they advanced, incidentally, by manipulating the masses by telling them what they wanted to hear.
That's information availability, a cornerstone of democracy.
The big challenge facing democracy in the 21st century is not the availability of information. If we've learned anything in the past fifty years, it's that information is like sand: it finds its way in through cracks and openings that were far too small to see, and fills your tent, your bunk, and your boots. The ubiquity of information is not the problem.
The problem is thought. Have you ever heard the expression, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?" It's true, it's true. To be partially informed and to think yourself wise is far, far worse than to be ignorant and to know it.
When you figure out how to write a computer program that makes people aware of the limits of their knowledge, please let me know. That'd be something worth having.
Re:Your one-stop source for news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which raises the issue, what is censored now? Anything? I can already visit Al Jazeera [aljazeera.net] to see all the bloody babies and anti Bush views I might care to read.
The barrier to individuals broadcasting news isn't censorship, it's credibility. The problem is, no one person's view constitutes "the news," even if they were there firsthand. Reporting news well requires access to the places and key figures, that's what news agencies offer.
it's a cycle (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:credibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
But it IS pretty easy to just clip off the beginning where the parents shot at the Americans. I'm just saying. This rush to trust "anyone else" is a foolish thing. To each their own I guess.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
Great! Now teenagers and old ladies can get sued by another content industry for sharing.