The Net's Effect on Journalism 149
An Associated Press article about the impact of the internet on journalism has a few interesting findings. A few years ago, it was expected that the internet would democratize news coverage. While print media is being rapidly reborn online, web-based news appears to be constraining the number of conversations instead of expanding them. "The news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report. Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found. Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said."
huh (Score:1, Insightful)
what a surprise.
Not the Net's fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it might be possible that these topics dominate the news so because they are the most important issues we currently face. Making the claim that the Net is "narrowing" the news agenda based upon this is disingenuous.
Why Democratize? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am so fucking sick of this belief on digg etc. that "the people" are finally taking back the web.
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
Article only applies to American Based news media. (Score:2, Insightful)
Investigative Journalism Takes Time and Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:-1, Insightful)
http://www.rationalreview.com/news [rationalreview.com]
After reading this for a few days, it's easy to see how mainstream news is just another arm of government, working on government's behalf. One obvious example is the constant stream of stories about individuals protecting themselves from predators without the aid of government. You won't see that on mainstream news, because mainstream news owes half their "success" (measured in dollars, not exposed facts) to government.
Re:I'd like to see the study (Score:2, Insightful)
Another problem is the severe lack of investigative questioning. They don't ever seem to want to delve into an issue and figure out *why* something is happening. For example, in recent news feeds about violence erupting in Tibet there is no mention of why violence is erupting. Who are the players? What are the issues? They show a video of a guy in Tiber riding his bike, a couple of guys pull him off the bike and start beating the crap out of him and there is no explanation. Why? Because they don't know and they don't care. They've got video and that's all that matters.
Another problem is the lack of fact checking. These politicians and their agents can say all sorts of misleading or incorrect statements and they aren't called on it by the reporters. I don't know if it's because the reporters and pundits are too dumb, too scared or too enamored with politicians. When it comes to reporting on anything outside of crime, war and politics? Forget it. Reporters are too lazy and ignorant to care about much else. And if they do, they're likely to get the facts dead wrong.
War almost broke out in South America a few weeks ago and there wasn't a peep about it in the mainstream media. I guess they didn't have any video ready.
Re:Why Democratize? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hasn't everyone figured this out yet? Not being funny. Quite serious. If you want the "NEWS" don't rely on just one source, and usually look for various "opinions" to get the full story.
The reference is from some hokey alien movie with an ex-wrestler... the truth is more scary because the aliens are not real, they are the elitest ruling class on both sides of the political spectrum and they will use each other and media outlets to keep you keeping your heads down and munching... QUESTION EVERYTHING. (except me, of course.)
Re:What I see... (Score:3, Insightful)
As a history guy you probably know that status and class bias is rampant and that censorship happens in academia and especially in "prestige" jobs or unsavor histories of countries that want to promote certain economic idealogies. In canada you won't see stuff like the bolshevik revolution taught in history courses in public or highschools for instance. Nor about employers killing their workers during the early 19th century, I was apalled at the hitsory painted in my "history" classes with garring facts ommitted and covered so quickly nad so naively that it was not meant to inform but to dissuade.
Like one commenter up above was concerned about credentials, what I'm more concerned about is what experts are getting away with. Looking back on the history of medicine and psychology (i.e. people with PHD's believing they could 'shock' their mentally ill patients and "cure" them) there are all kinds of quacks and nutcases unfortunately due to our limited knowledge that are only found out long after the fact, eugenics came from the most educated of classes, it certainly didn't come from the bottom. And at the time it was hopelessly naive, there needs to be a check on human ignorance at all levels.
Seems obvious to me... (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the previous poster who mentioned the election coverage - while this is an extremely important election for this country, I have to agree that the coverage has been ridiculous. At this point, the "analysts" have the gall to claim that the public is suffering from "election fatigue", which is basically their way of saying "We've exhausted every possible detail and want to talk about something different". Just another example of the American media's race to irrelevance.
Re:Well DUH (Score:3, Insightful)
With all due respect: maybe that explains why America is so recklessly fucking up all the wars they try to wage. A little bit of wider perspective is useful every now and then.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not what's being said loudly that counts (Score:2, Insightful)
If only one online web site carried a story about starving children in XYZland, but 10 million pairs of eyeballs saw it and paid attention to it, that's a lot more significant than a story about a battle in Iraq that hit every news aggregator on the planet but got universally ignored by readers.
Re:Why Democratize? (Score:3, Insightful)
It helps if the news is kept mild, and safe so as not to offend readers or advertisers.
The news is not being democratised, public opinion is being democratised. The forming of public opinion is being shaped by a much more democratic internet and not necessarily news sites but more by specialist sites that often follow only one topic, be it the slaughter in Iraq, the suppression of freedom in Tibet, election fraud in the US or the extinguishing of the Palestinians by Israel as a range of examples. A huge number of sites, that are in affect serialised news stories, that you can use to monitor a particular situation and watch how it progresses and that you can also compare to the news in mild and brief as presented by more typical news sites.
So the typical news websites have simply become a lead to more specialised news sites that cover a topic in far more detail and over a far longer period.
Absolute Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What I see... (Score:3, Insightful)
And politicans have figured out how to play this echo chamber to turn the media into a propaganda tool. Dan Rather is an excellent point -- he went forward with a story that was actually true, and the spin folks at Fox managed to get him fired over the fact that they used the wrong document to prove it (there were other, non-forged documents demonstrating the truth of the POINT of the story). The "Swiftboating" is another example -- the guys were cranks, liars, political operatives, but they got some coverage, so everyone else had to immediately rush to cover them, lending more and more legitimacy to things that weren't actually true.
But then, truth costs money; echoing babble is much cheaper. And when you've got 188 hours of cable news to fill every week per channel, well... you're surely not going to pay reporters to actually find out stuff to fill that time, are you?
Re:What about journalism before the net? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are spot on, in that your statements match my experience.
This current administration has tested my political awareness to an extent I didn't think was possible. It took going to the net and reading, and more importantly, HAVING CONVERSATIONS, to ferret out the reality of things.
The net, being a two way medium really changes the game. It's pretty easy to just consume the traditional media sources and be happy with that. Do it in a casual enough manner and it will all add up too.
Having some conversations with people will just shatter that in an instant, and that's exactly what happened with me and political issues.
Been using the net since '91, pre web. Didn't do politics much at all. My focus was tech and entertainment, just like most everybody else. Those conversations were no different than those I had with real people near me. The primary advantage was a greater body of participants, meaning most any subject matter could be discussed and shared with others of interest. Absolutely great stuff and honestly a nice chunk of how I make my living these days.
That all has moved into more mainstream discourse and the impact is still rippling through. I find it very interesting that we are having the open -vs- closed / smart -vs- dumb network discussions right as these things intersect the greater political discourse! With this administration in particular, we would have seen far greater trouble had we not had the venue to fact check and sanity check what we were being fed.
There is one downside though, and maybe this relates to the topic:
The ability for people to self-select and seek only affirmation is far greater now than it once was. The fairness doctrine was aimed squarely at that, kind of forcing people to consume enough news and commentary diversity to prevent simple affirmation from gestating into bad territory.
With that doctrine removed, we get news-tainment now. On one hand, it's good as in "The Daily Show" kind of good. Younger people can watch that show, stay informed and entertained. On the other hand, we get Hannity! People can watch that show, but get seriously misinformed yet are still entertained.
Right now there is a nice split between older news consumers, still largely depending on the traditional media sources, Gen X'ers like myself who will easily choose the net in fairly significant numbers, and the growing younger class who grew up with it by default.
IMHO, the perception of narrowing, in the spirit of how I think it's being presented here, will diminish as the older crowd moves on.
Re:Lowest Common Denominator (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, this is nothing new really. The US is pretty much isolated from much of the world. We only touch borders with 2 countries. Unlike Europe where you can drive through 3+ countries in one day, you can drive for weeks and never see all of the US. Our geographic situation tends to lead towards a 100% US centric interest. Most US citizens, never leave the country, and there often isn't much need to do so. And now, with a great deal of hostility towards the "Stupid Americans"...many feel there is no need to put up with negative attitudes or even real danger while travelling abroad.
If you take this into consideration....you can start to understand. For the most part...until now, if you neglect the world wars...nothing much in the world has ever really effected life in the US. We had lots of land with varying climates, and could grow more food than we needed, and we used to be able to manufacture anything we needed. The manufacturing loss really hasn't been perceived yet by the typical US citizen, but, I think it is starting to be seen a little now (ie. lead and other health issues from Chinese products.).
I think we're slowly starting to see how things in the world can effect us some, but, in general, a person in the US could live their whole life not knowing anything of the world outside the US, and be perfectly happy, and never perceive a loss.
I'd dare say most Americans grow up, and never really even move from their home city or state, much less travel outside our borders. This is changing these days, but, still, I'd dare say that's still have the majority of Americans grow up and move about over their lifetimes.