Slashdot Mirror
Net: Now Our Most Serious News Medium?
Even heads of state get the significance of the Net these days. So-called "serious" journalists had been dumping every imaginable rumor - that the State Department had blown up, that crop-dusting planes were about to shower us with anthrax live on the air without any filtering or substantiation. It seemed to me that, unlike any previous big story, the Net had become the place where people were going for more accurate information -- including all kinds of content unavailable in most traditional media.
Who would ever have thought that George W. Bush would do his primary fund-raising appeal before Congress and the public by announcing a url: libertyunite.org? Or that British Prime Minister Tony Blair would publish the evidence against Osama Bin-Laden on a government Web site? Bush's advisers grasped the fund-raising potential of the Net, and Blair realized it is a new way to reach the world, including remote, even hostile corners.
The Net was not only the source of heavy traffic to conventional news sites like Cnn.com, Usatoday.com or the Washington Post/New York Times sites. Literally thousands of new sites sprouted information -- there are way too many to list here -- offering information on the tragedy itself and its survivors, working for disaster relief, presenting discussions about the Taliban and Afghanistan, Islam, Arab resentment against the United States.These news sites were a source of clarity and accuracy for many millions of people, puzzled or frightened by alarmist reports on TV and elsewhere. People posted video online from the disaster site, and broke important news online of the plane attacks, the building's collapse, and the rescue. It were these accounts that reported for the first time that planes had had hit the tower, that the towers had fallen, that there there were likely to be few survivors in the rubble. Two sites I saw were devoted to airline passengers stranded in hotel rooms all over the country seeking information on alternative forms of travel. And it was on the Net, on the Onion's terrific site that the first witty, tasteful and necessary media and political spoofs of the response to the tragedy were pulled off.
Many more sites devoted themselves to personal testimony: from people who saw the disaster, who were sending e-mail news dispatches to friends, who sought to clarify rumors or post accounts, who needed to discuss how they felt about the new "war."
Transcripts of 911 calls from the World Trade Center are posted online, as are the transcripts of reports by Islamic and Arab TV news organizations. This new kind of personal reporting offers an invaluable archive of a global tragedy. In the understandable patriotic frenzy that followed the attacks, it was on the Net that dissenters, peace activists and privacy advocates first surfaced, not the mainstream media. The Net has thus become a bulwark against the one dimensional view of events and the world that characterize Big Media. All points of view appeared, and instantly.
This kind of in-depth discussion and information was rarely available in conventional media -- on CNN and other sites, activists in Arab nations directly debated and talked with Americans, for example, something never before possible in media, which has neither the air time, space, resources, or inclination. Newspapers publish much too infrequently to compete seriously for long on a breaking story like this, with either TV or the Net. (An exception: localized cases like New York or Washington, where coverage in daily papers, particularly the New York Times and The Washington Post, was important and thorough).
Big media, already fragmenting, appears to be dividing this way:
- Commercial TV is a medium of images and entertainment. Nobody, certainly not the Net at this point, can compete with TV's ability to present powerful imagery live, from the plane attacks to speeches before Congress to Ground Zero to the aftermath to global reaction and soon, military conflict. In fact, TV arguably transmits powerful images too often and for too long, creating an emotional, almost hysterical climate around big stories even when there?s no news to report.
- Cable TV is the medium of political argument and confrontation. Channels like Fox, CNN and MSNBC are institutional media, the place where politicians and lobbyists gather to press their viewpoints, talk indirectly with other leaders elsewhere, share insider information and float options and ideas. These media are striking in their overwhelming tilt towards officials, bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians and academics. You can watch them for days and not hear from average people, beyond the silly handful of calls or e-mails they occasionally cite.
- The Net offers not only breaking news -- mainstream media companies all have sophisticated websites -- but is the medium of individual expression and additional, more in depth information. Instant message systems played a crucial role in transmitting information, both accurate and false, especially in and near the disaster sites. IM will almost surely become a dominant and significant information source in the future, especially as it moves beyond college campuses and networked companies.
But for all the mainstream media phobias about the dangerous or irresponsible Net, it's seemed increasingly clear in the weeks since the attacks that the Net has become our most serious medium, the only one that offers information consumers breaking news and discussions, alternative points of view. Sadly, the Net seems to be the favored medium of the terrorists who planned the attacks as well. (Countless sites sprung up to detail what Islam is really about, and how diverse opinions in the Arab world are at play in this disaster).
It's the medium of personal expression -- people e-mailed friends and relatives to tell them they were okay, to get relief information, to volunteer time and money. And, of course, unlike conventional media, which still give ordinary citizens little or no opportunity to participate, the Net is architecturally and viscerally interactive. Feedback and individual opinion are not ghettoized in op-ed pages or in a handful of "we-want-to-hear-from-you" (no, they don't) phone calls, but are an integral part of Net information dispersal, it's core.
The Net has had its ups and downs in recent months. It's still beset by intrusive regulators, eager law enforcement officials and greedy dot.com entrepreneurs and corporate interests who want its profits but not its values. It's still going through a shaky phase economically. But the WTC attacks remind us of the extraordinary openness, open distribution of information and sense of community-building that are the heart of the wired world's promise.
While the net is a great source for information, it can also be a great source for disinformation.
Bert and Osama, anyone?
(yes, that photo was a joke, but other stories and photos that purport to be authentic may not always be so)
Don't get me wrong, I love Slashdot, but as an example of the independent news the Net has to offer, one can't help but come to the conclusion that CNN and its TV-based family will continue to be the norm for a long, long time.
September 11th was a great example of this. When the fit really hit the shan, all the major news sites got slammed, failed, and people went back to watching CNN, MSNBC, or whatever.
Yes, there are plenty of inspirational stories of independent websites helping to feed the public's quest for more information, but these are in the minority. Joe Sixpack and his grandmother still relied on good ol' television to find out what happened.
Is the net a serious news source. Certainly not. Not yet anyway.
Got Rhinos?
The reality is not as you describe it, Jon.
...]
[disregarding the flashing banner from Planet Hard Drive - who will never get my business now
The reality is that we still depend on the radio for news in cars and when we wake up. We still look to TV for full coverage. We use the Net because we're not allowed to have the other two at work.
But we do use the Net to spread misinformation, rumors, and to get all paranoid. When we're not using call-in talk shows on the radio and TV. It looks more beleivable on the PC monitor than when we phone up and people can tell by our rushed voices that we're loonies.
There are always nutsos out there. Most of the time they're not dangerous, so long as you keep them away from sharp things.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It's true that the Net offers better immediate news than TV and radio (with the possible exception of NPR) these days. But for long-term, in-depth analysis, I still rely on that oh-so-retro source, the newspaper, for three reasons:
1. There's a level of fact-checking in print journalism that doesn't exist in any other news source. I'm not claiming that newspaper reporters never make mistakes, by any means, but I get the strong feeling that the information they provide is more accurate by an order of magnitude than anything that comes out of my TV, radio, or computer.
2. Generally, when we commit words to paper, we feel that they have more import than if we speak them or type them on a computer, and thus we are more careful about what we say. Newspaper articles in the wake of the 11 September attacks were much less overheated and emotional than reporting from any other source.
3. Similarly, reading something on paper is a fundamentally different experience from hearing it on the radio, watching it on TV, or reading it on screen. I can read and reread at my own pace, thinking carefully about the information I'm taking in, which I can't do with CNN. And newspapers hold my attention, unlike the Net where something different is only a mouse click away.
Don't get me wrong here -- I very much like the instant access to information I get on the Net, and I do get an increasing amount of my information there. But until both Net journalism and the experience of receiving it are up to print standards -- and they aren't, by a long shot -- the newspaper will remain my primary source for the information I use to shape my views on world events.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
2: Print - the best researched and most respected news is still carried out by folks like the WSJ, Washington Post, etc.
3: Radio - radio continues to feature in-depth reporting, although much more dumbed down than in print sources.
DEAD LAST: TV - the boob tube continues to be the news source for the illiterate, with the maximum amount of information transmitted to be contained in a two minute blurb. Everything Chomsky says about TV news is true. This is the gutter of information and news.
Maybe more people in the US think of CNN first because they're familiar with 'em. I doubt that BBC programming has nearly as high market penetration as does CNN here.
The BBC site has been head-and-shoulders above CNN, or the Big Three US broadcasting networks, in terms of quality reporting (e.g. not obsessing with "Terror and Love" human-interest stories, generally avoiding rumor-mongering, and bothering to go into depth where useful).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Definitely most abundant. Net users at least have the opportunity to see multiple sides of every issue or event. It's a matter of diligence though--the lazy will be force fed a re-hash of the Big Five censored-and-ready-to-eat television "news"; but the curious and driven can become more enlightened as time goes on.
I am startled by not only the diversity of opinion--an endangered species in meatspace--but the growing animosity against the "other" side, much like what is going on in meatspace (try standing on a busy streetcorner with a sign that says "Make love, not war"). The willingness of Americans to waive their Civil Rights for a continued false feeling of security presents quite a danger to the diversity of the 'Net. Maybe the combination of general delusion and hostility will bring in the notion that minority points of view are terrorist expression and should be hastily punished in a most hostile fashion.
If this happens, the terrorists will rejoice in their victory.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Ironically, thats why its not as good as the Net.
.. you're not getting the news, you're getting a product. And its no wonder people 'trust' or 'like' it more than the Net, for the most part. It's packaged carefully, and full of the emotional hyperbole that totally renders any attempt to deal with events in an objective manner. Milk is better for you than Coke, but which one sells more?
People may believe its 'trusted', but that doesn't change the simple fact that TV News is BIG BIG business, and totally controlled
"Old man yells at systemd"
Ok, are we going to read the same thing after every US tragedy? Oklahoma City was the Internet's "proving ground," Columbine was the Internet's "proof of usefulness," Monica Lewinsky was evidence of the Internet's "advantages of traditional media." Every tragedy produces comments like this, but the Web is 10 years old now - the Internet became mainstream 4 or 5 years ago, at the latest. People know what the 'net offers, it doesn't take a disaster to "prove" it again.
Conventional journalists are still obsessed with hackers and pornographers; still fuss about whether the Net is safe or factual. But increasingly, they steer readers to their websites for more in-depth information and conversation.
Unfortunately, the mainstream news sites are almost all that remain. ABCNews.com and cnn.com are our most important sources of information online, but does that change anything? It leaves information in the hands of the monopolistic communications behemoths and gives them an excuse to provide less coverage through their traditional print and broadcast outlets.
"Freest and most diverse" my ass. Independent sites like The Industry Standard and Wired News (they need Jon there more than Slashdot, obviously) are being shut down or cut to the bone as funding and advertising dry up, leaving only the major media outlets to continue shoveling out the same crap they've always produced. Yahoo and the rest all rely on triple-filtered newswire trash like Reuters or Bloomberg news, which provide only the basest of information that seems to be typed up by robots.
The Internet had potential, but more and more we see the mass media outlets choking that off and turning it into just another way for the same old companies to reach people with the same information they've always provided.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
ummm...a lot of sites are run by big business as well. Think CNN, MSNBC and such.
The commercialization of the Internet has led to many of the same problems as more traditional media, like TV.
You trust TV?
Personally, I dont think I've ever seen a TV newscast (or general newspaper article) about anything where I have knowledge about the subject where they get it right. I suspect the same is true about the subjects where I do not have knowledge, which means they likely dont get anything right. At best there is massive omissions, at worst there are huge amounts of factual errors.
Apart from that most mainstream media is rather biased (of course, if we get our news only from the mainstream media we dont realize this and we start believing that they are reporting the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which is the whole idea behind propaganda). Bias means it isnt reliable or trustworthy, since you get only the parts of the story that promote the media interests point of view.
Streamlining ala cnn, ap, reuters is also bad, since the mainstream media is just spewing the same thing (usually with the same wording!) a large number of times. Biased unreliable news with factual errors repeated on many channels many times makes it _appear_ more true, but it doesnt make it more true.
The net has one large advantage. You can find many different viewpoints, all of which may range from idiotic to completely kooky, but here at least you _know_ you are dealing with unreliable newssources and you can sift through them with that in mind.
TV appears to be more anchored in reality than the average slashdot comment. But that's what you get when you present put money and control behind the presentation. And the appearance is just appearance.
The major thing the Net has that other news sources lack is a real sort of community. You can't interact with the talking heads on T.V., you can't hunt for the specific information you want, you can't add information of your own or dispel rumors or investigate myths. That probably explains why George Dubya went straight for the Internet (libertyunites.com) in his efforts to rally us together. There is already a live and responsive community here. In the hours immediately after the attacks, places like slashdot and google were mirroring vital news sources for readers, and community bulletin boards like craigslist were hopping with people organizing victims' relief and sharing their own news and responses and coming together for rallies and prayer meetings and things. You can't get that kind of instant popular reaction from NBC.
I heard some amazing misinformation on television the day of the attacks, incredible rumors and tall tales (police officer who "surfed" rubble down 86 floors in the collapse?), and it was when I went to the Net that I found people who had followed up on these stories, who knew what was right and what wasn't, and who had real information of their own as news broke. T.V. and radio aren't diverse enough media; there are only a handful of networks and major news stations. On the Internet, any idiot with a modem can put his two cents in, and sometimes that's not so great and sometimes it's amazing.
I don't tell you because I love you, I tell you because I'm bossy.
Apparently history is not longer taught as most people are amazingly myopic about events older than 15 years.
'Twas the Spanish American war which gave rise to the tabloids. Pulitzer, remember him? Yeah, well, he was a scummy journalist who helped, along with other publishers of the day, to get the jingoistic ferver stirred up into a bonafide shitstorm until we all were ready to pummel a bunch of hapless down and out poverty striken farmers in Cuba.
Oddly, the same shit people spouted then "We have to get those bastards! American will not stand for this! This unchecked aggression! Rally 'round the flag "America, america, god shed his grace on thee...." etc etc -- that same old party line is getting rehased now, only this time, it's courtesey of the NYTimes, Washpost, CNN, FoxNews, etc...whereas before it would have been the bowels of the indsutry like the NY Daily News, and VCY America News Network.
No sig is worth reading.
Television is not and can never be truly interactive.
The net (email, web, IM, etc.) is primarily interactive. Even if you are primarily a consumer, your consumption statistics are fed back into the system. But that is just the lowest level, of course. Many people have personal home pages, many people can contribute to weblogs, discussion groups, usenet news, email lists, etc. and their contributions are archived, responded to, and have a real impact on the future direction of information exchange.
Although Katz does not state it explicitly, this interactivity is what distinguishes the net from the old forms of media, and is one of the really cool aspects of the information flow following Sept. 11th. Slashdot, for example, experienced record levels of comments for the several articles about the distaster that were posted - often well in excess of 1000 comments!!! That just isn't possible with any other media.
And because it is still an emerging media, yes - the signal to noise ratio isn't the greatest. But mechanisms are being developed and tested to improve this.
For truly interactive education, check out Oomind:
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I hear and agree with those who say the internet today is more important for news than any other medium. You can listen to the BBC or C4 on television, and their coverage of the live events was incomparable. Recent events were seen simultaneously on television by people around the western world.
However, when we start to look at the reporting of an event's aftermath, we see a different picture emerging. We get the plain facts (presidential speeches) etc. but the opinions are entirely those of the "political class", those who frequent the offices of government, and mainly those who agree with their government. Anyone anti-government typically has a problem creating a serious image on TV or radio, and comes off looking silly against the groomed, professional anchormen and ministers.
Now, we look at the net. For the basic information, everything is there, not just transcripts of the speeches, but audio and video too. The more sites it appears on, the more you can trust it. (I assumed the bombings on TV were a hoax or a film until I noticed it on all 4 channels) Sure, you might not trust the CNN website for whatever reason, but you can open 20 other news websites in 20 browser windows, and get the same story from all the angles, from various countries.
However, I find that many of the big news sites, those of TV stations, those of newspapers, those of the BBC tend to echo the opinions of their reporters in traditional media. No surprise there, but it still lacks the "opposing view" so essential to the balanced presentation of news.
But then I found slashdot, where people write the news for themselves. Since I started reading slashdot articles, I've only gone back to the BBC one or two times, to confirm things posted here. The "peer-to-peer news reporting" is much more useful than traditional websites, as people get the chance to discuss the news. If someone posts incorrect data, then you can read the comments, and see what the consensus is. You don't need to curse the smug newsreader on your TV; if you have a correction, you can say it.
So well done to everyone at slashdot for making the idea of internet news really work. The internet will become the staple of news coverage, especially for those in offices all day, and I hope that peer-posted and reviewed news sites become the standard in years to come.
Oliver White
My news
Oh give me a break. TV is a tool of large corporate government agencies. It doesn't NEED to be hacked. It is inherently unreliable.
Trust and reliability issues aside, TV is NOTORIOUSLY full of fluff. On Sept 11 they spent all friekin day showing the same damn imagines OVER and OVER again. Rarely providing new information. The information it does provide is so charged with the overly emotional imagery. its almost useless. TV is NOT a good place to get information. Any written media is much better. Newspapers provide long articles detailing information and data. Not that it is perfect, but I will take written news over TV any day. And the 'net is that much better than newspapers because it is late breaking and interactive.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The net is not the most reliable source of news, not the quickest to break a story, not the most stable, nor the most accessible.
I remember Sept. 11th and when I heard Howard Stern on the radio announce the attacks, I immediately tried to go to several major news organizations' web site only to find them down almost all morning. The sites couldn't handle the traffic. CNN.com failed me. The radio kept me informed when the internet failed, and, unlike CNN, Howard Stern is not a journalist.
Not only that, if I was on the subway or bus, I wouldn't have even have had a chance to check the net, because it is very inaccessible. On the other hand, radio and TV waves are broadcast all over the air, accessible wherever you have a device to pick up the signal. And a walkman or a small portable TV is cheap. The argument for wireless internet may be brought up, but try to find a wireless provider in your area, an affordable phone to get that signal, and a speed decent enough to get info.
Also, the news content on most of the non-major news organizations web sites are unreliable, can be extremely biased and have no standards of excellence like news organizations at CBS, CNN, ABC, FOX, NBC, etc. I have seen some of the most conservative and liberal opinions ever on the net, truly hammering away at their agenda's under the pretext o news. I have even read some radical Islam papers on the net (very interesting).
Yeah it's easy to point and laugh at the "standards" of the big 5 networks, but they so have some journalistic integrity and the journalists do take their jobs seriously. It's the parent company's that are all about the $$, not the journalism departments.
The only good thing I can say about the net is the vast choice of news outlets available. Where other than the CIA HQ, major book store, or Christian Science Reading Room can you get such a variety of opinions and points of view. Just use judgment when reading and don't let the info be spoon-fed to you. Create your own opinions
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Profits and bias-reporting (towards the left) seem to drive the news this days, even with the 9-11 incident. Worldnetdaily and newsmax offers many stories that would not be caught dead on a leftist editor's ABC or NBC show, since they support guns, people's rights, etc. Drudge is a little better, then major news, but not everything is researched properly at times.
I can't stand most major talking heads on the news like Dan Rather and his kin. The way they skew news stories with personal like or dislike is horrible.
> TV is still the most reliable and trusted media.
This is a purely relative stance. And one that should not be propagated as accurate.
I, for one, listened to the news on television and found it repetitive and void. Trusted sites like CNN, BBC, Slashdot, and a handful of other sites were far more reliable in the timely nature of their releases and the quality of information. There were a few rumors that got posted, there were retractions once verification was made. But by large I heard more speculative and unsubstantiated rumors through television (and via word of mouth) then I did on the net. It got to the point that I stopped watching TV and listening to people, and just started reading and refeshing...
On top of that, if I really wanted to know what was going on, there were repeaters of the local police scanners set up in various sites streaming everything from Real Audio to MP3. I got to hear first hand as traffic jams were piling up in DC and people were getting out and leaving their cars in the middle of the street. I was horrified to know that with all of this happening, there were still people being held up at ATM's and other petty crimes taking place.
The amount of information availible, and its quality were astounding. It's like normal periodicals though, you don't go to the grocery store to read hard news. On the internet, you don't go to drudgereport.com to get accurate updates of world news.
It ultimately boils down to the fact that news is only as accurate and effective as the receptical it's stored in. If that recepticle wears the vacent stare of a slobbering idiot, you have to consider the source. And to be perfectly frank, after a few hours of TV news, that's exactly what the anchors looked like as they struggled to say anything relevant.
---------- Hot Rats!
It's that you are able to get massive variations of the same news depending on culture bias.
So if something happens in the US I go look at an online paper for Europe to get thier view, and then one in China to get another view or Korea or Pakistan, etc, etc. Then you have "on the ground" type posts. Slashdot as an example you find that a lot of news stories posted here are covered in more detail by the readers then the actual reporter.
Yes all of them have bias and proproganda to some level but it certainly helps to trim out the BS.
In the end you have to make your own choices on what you believe to be true. Better to here the story from everyone then just one person.
Right answer, but wrong justification.
/. as a last resort. I was much less worried about CNN being hacked than I was about not being able to see it at all.
I used the net on September 11 for exactly the reason you described. At my office, we had a TV, but no cable or antenna: the television was used strictly for videoconferences. So, we had a colleague at another site pipe us the CNN feed over the video link. (Gotta love fat pipe).
The big story about the net as a source of information was how badly it failed in the few hours after the attacks: every major news site was utterly swamped, with the exception of Slashdot - and that's probably because most people were turning to
On the plus side: Blogger, and web logs in general, was priceless to me in keeping track of my friends. The first indication I had that my NYC friends weren't hurt in the attack was seeing them update their personal pages.
The idea of the Net as the ultimate news source is comical. The problem with it is that it as a medium is too fast. It is too easy to publish rumors/half-truths/lies. With a click of a button, something is live. I remember on Sept. 11 various websites erroneously telling of car bomb explosions. These were not really reported on TV or the radio and especially not newspapers. The slightly delayed process of the other mediums (partly a result that so many people are involved) generally filters out much of the internet crap that goes as news.
While it may be true that most people on the Net
get their news from commercial (TV) news sites,
the Net doesn't force you to do it this way.
One good use of the Net is to visit the various
search sites and type in the keywords from news
stories. You can rapidly find all sorts of good
background information that isn't on the news
web sites.
This is especially useful now that Condoleeza Rice
seems to have persuaded the major news sources to
suppress the Other Side's public comments. It's
very easy to find them on the Net, as well as lots
of analyses and history from all sorts of points
of view.
The major importance of the Net is that a lot of
information is Out There, and it can be found. You
aren't at the mercy of the major commercial news
organizations.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
But the 'net isn't like that. People must actively seek information from it. They have to click on something, ot type an URL. It's not continually running in the background, trying to catch their attention. Secondly, people can seek out and take what they want from the 'net- the choice of what to read is theirs, not some producer's at CNN. Readers can keep looking around the 'net until they're satisfied what they see is a definitive answer.
So whether or not the 'net has become the definitive source of news, readers feel like they're getting what they want, so they're accepting it that way more and more.
Seriously, this is what the net is good at - it's so new, a site like the Onion can get away with finding the humor in the attack. SNL would have had a hard time doing it, Bill Maher is in a lot of shit for doing what he does, and newspapers still think Mallard Fillmore belongs in the comics section.
On a more personal note, the repeated clip of planes crashing into buildings, the footage of New Yorker's reacting, the climbing death tolls, the speeches of pundits and politicians - none of this moved me on an emotional level, except to push me into further shock. But, when I read this article from that Onion issue, it moved me to tears.
Consider this: How many times have you watched TV coverage of a subject you know and understand and you find yourself thinking "they're getting it wrong, that's false, they're missing it,..."?
Exactly. Just about every time television covers a subject I'm knowledgeable on, they totally miss the essence of it and present an inaccurate report. That's why I don't trust TV news for the most part.
TV was great on Sept 11 because it gave us live feeds of the events as they unfolded. It ceased to be useful about 36 hours later, when the talking heads took over.
There have been a few good programs in the last month on PBS, BBC, C-Span, MSNBC and CNN, but for the most part it's homogenous, prepackaged crap - basically press releases and official statements repeated verbatim. I'm very grateful to have the Internet.
I think that a lot of people are missing an important point. The key here is the diversity of the reporting found on the net. Sure, CNN was the best place to go for horrific scenes of planes crashing, towers falling and people fleeing. But the net is the best place for information that goes beyond the attacks, for opinions from other parts of the world, for dissenting views within our own society, etc.
Many of us have known this for a long time. I have family overseas and am interested in the news from there. Last year during the Monica Lewinsky scandal it was extremely fustrating for me. Every day CNN and all the other news stations filled each half hour with 25 minutes of astounding details about Clinton's sex life, something that is neither important nor interesting to me. In the remaining 5 minutes they would cover the rest of the USA and if we were lucky there might be a tidbit about someplace else in the world. Even the damn international news programs focused on international opinions about president Clinton's sex life.
I switched to the net for my news a long time ago.
Not that one does not need to be skeptical of the information on the net. There are a lot of people pushing their own opinions as well as a lot of sloppy reporting. Of course we see plenty of this in the western media as well. But then again, I think that I am smart enough to filter out the propaganda and the hyperbole on both sides and form my own opinion.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
But the problem is deeper than them simply being factually wrong. I think people in the media often mistake their epistemic role for a metaphysical one. Since often they alone can tell us what happened, they immodestly extend their authority to how and why.
During the shelling of the Russian Parliament building years ago, a CNN reporter noted of the live coverage, "It's a little scary, beaming these images into people's homes without us being able to interpret it for them". Not as scary as that comment. This is going to be a period of tectonic shifts in world relations and perceptions. While I admit that most people would rather be led than lead, the Net gives those who want to think for themselves an alternative to sifting through the media's predigested sludge.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Try logging into ANY news site on the 11th. CNN had a minimalist website (and this was AFTER being akamized.) MSNBC refused to pickup, the NYTimes went to text only, the WashPost was dead.
The ONLY way to get your news was not from the new, shiny internet, or from the wonderful new WAP cell phones... nope... the only way to get info was to resort to the old stalwart, our good ole Television.
The only shining point of the Net's handling of this entire crisis was possibly the use of AIM, which kept people in touch after the bombing when cell phones went down. I verified that quite a few of my friends made it thanks to their AIM screen names. I still remember the "Hey, everyone... I'm out, but yes, I'm alive and my family is ok too." away message friend put up.
But aside from AIM, the Net (for news) was an absolute failure on the 11th.
My view is that the level of analysis given, for example, in this Slashdot comment does not exist in the Western mass media. I sent a copy of this comment to some non-technical people--who don't read Slashdot--their view was the same: nothing else they had seen was better than Slashdot.
I agree with what you said, to a point. However, I'm not sure the net is so much more reliable, taken at face value.
Consider this: How many times have you watched TV coverage of a subject you know and understand and you find yourself thinking "they're getting it wrong, that's false, they're missing it,..."?
I was nearly crying in my chair yesterday reading the Slashdot article Scientists Double Optical Fiber Transmission Capacity. That (along with most of the optical networking posts and commentary I've seen here) are so full of misinformation, poor assumptions, and incorrect assertions that it hurts, and I've only been in the industry a year. I refrain from posting on such posts because I know it will suck up way too much time.
I realize that Slashdot and other news sites don't have the breadth of knowledge to screen and fix everything that comes through, and that everything I read here must be taken with a grain of salt and a pound of research. That's why I still read Slashdot almost religiously. But how many "regular" people out there realize that about TV, or even about the Net? Just because the Net is "less" censored or wrong as a whole doesn't mean it isn't less so on an individual site basis.
I said at the beginning that I agreed with you, and I do. I think the variety the net gives and allows makes up for the quantity of misinformation around. TV doesn't allow that variety. If a person wants to put in the effort to gather their information from multiple sources and draw their own conclusions, they can do quite well on TV and on the net -- but better on the net. I just wanted to add this point.
-Puk
Another example of traditional media getting it worng is a report by CBC Radio that terrorists used stenography to hide messages in MP3s.
This interesting piece of obviously wrong information is too perfect: not only are technologies like crypto and stenography dangerous unless controlled by governments, those pesky MP3's are just part of the problem. Even more reason to simply outlaw unencumbered audio formats.
Now we've associated all of these technologies with terrorism.
This is not to say that net sources do not originate bogus information. The danger (as already pointed out) is that we tend to accept traditional sources at face value.
-- clvrmnky
What I have found is that the net allows me to dig into 'the story' a lot deeper. Yes there is tons of crap to sift through, I find that enjoyable: I can quickly check sources and references and the like as well as seeing many different sides of the story.
This is not possible on televison. There is a lot of lip services paid to these ideals, yet seemingly impossible for them to do at this point due to the heavy corporate control over the broadcast medium.
Like people who think that public broadcasting is the shelter from the storm: Last night while listening to NPR there was a show that came on that was about Democracy and the war. In the begining of the show it was announced that it was underwritten by Merck Pharmecuticals. All I could think was "Now they don't have any financial interest in anything now do they?"
My feelings is the net was initially about information, it took a turn and became about selling, but in these strange times it is going back to its roots. Broadcast has just become too transparent at this point when there is so much more access to other ideas from other sources.
Not to say TV doesnt have some good stuff, it does.
Attempting to compile a semi biased list of alternative ideas and news stories at my website daily:
I probably shouldn't post on an old thread with 320+ comments (I came to the site from the daily e-mail summary), but one function of the net that's invaluable is as a meta filter, where activists can ferret out thinly-reported, but significant stories.
? 1042) , showing that a few brave politicians are reacting to events with rational thinking and not hysteria.
An example is the anti-drug war archive site mapinc.org, which was one of the few places you could find information on the proposed new "drug czar's" Senate hearing Wednesday. Drug reformers are already on high alert where President Bush's Pentacostal Attorney General and Bob Jones U. graduate DEA chief equate "drugs" with international terrorism (so that maybe Joe Potsmoker or Chrissy Ecstacy Head is now a traitor supporting Bin Laden, or something).
It was therefore great to see this story ( http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1761/a05.html