The Media in 2014

Alexandre Van de Sande writes "Robin Sloan made a flash video as a "documentary" of how big enterprises like google and amazon converged medias and changed the way we see news by 2014. It's a vision of what could be (or will be) the world with personalized media, made by peers, and the guy knows what's going on on those big heads. It ends with a sad view on which, althought some people get their news in a way they could never before, most of them just get a bunch of untrue gossip and sensasionalist trivia. And that's exactly what they wanted." This will take a few minutes to watch, but stick it out to the end. I think there's a lot in there that you really should think about.

Comments

Already there?

[Anonymous Coward]

"most of them just get a bunch of untrue gossip and sensasionalist trivia"

Isn't this already true for the American "real press"?

Re:Already there?

[RobotRunAmok]

Even NPR, that one-time bastion of somewhat impartial reporting, has started sliding toward sensationalism.

Actually, NPR was a bastion of left-think, until very recently when the right-thinkers kicked up a ruckus that public funds were fueling a partisan news outlet. That, and the fact that the Big Money from corporate sponsorships tends to frown on Left/Green perspectives.

Now, NPR seems to go out of its way to present bi-partisan views, except it often does so across multiple days' telecasts, a situation guaranteed to enrage the partisan occasional listener on either side. Of course, long-time lefty NPR listeners moan their network's`shift to the center, and it's tough to blame them.

With multiple strong, clearly partisan media outlets available now for both sides, it's unclear whether or not a venue which painstakingly ventures to be non-partisan can survive.

Journalism is dying. Clinton's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine opened the gates up to the New Media barbarian hordes, Blair/NYT and Rather/CBS poisoned the Emperors' wine, and now the Mob has seen through the bread and circuses, picked up javelins, and become bloggers.

Once, journalists presented the news, as delivered to them from strange and ancient teletype-oracles only they had access to. Now, everybody has their own AP/UPI feed, and more sources than Cronkite ever dreamed of. Once, everybody who became a professional journalist did so not because he wanted to present world events in a fair and balanced manner, but because he wanted to influence world events, crusade for a cause, and be a celebrity. Then, journalists had to pretend they had interestes other than their own in mind. Soon, they can cease pretending completely.

Within Ten Years (Mark My Words): Every major news outlet ceases delivering "the news" in primetime as they currently do, and instead they are all attempting to imitate the success of Bill O'Reilly on Fox, creating celebrity pundits who themselves are their own cottage industries. Right-wing pundits, left-wing pundits, gay-pundits, green-pundits, libertarian-pundits, techno-pundits, luddite-pundits, kid-pundits, septuagenarian-pundits, Baptist-pundits and Wiccan-Pundits -- celebrity wannabes nurturing book deals, all.

Re:Already there?

[Greslin]

Hasn't it always?

Seriously, anyone who thinks that this is anything new - or something whipped up by this newfangled Internet thing - needs to go grab a book called "The Image: A Guide To Psuedo-Events In America", by historian Daniel Boorstin. Written in 1961, it examines the history of public relations in America during the twentieth century. The book is mainly about how folks discovered that you don't actually need a real event in order to have news. Just create a *reaction*, regardless of whether it was justified by reality, and then report on the reaction.

Boorstin predicted that if things didn't change, the American entertainment and news gathering industries would eventually merge. Rather than accurately reporting the facts, the overriding goal would be to capture and maintain an audience.

Funny part is, when the book came out in 1962, Boorstin was traveling in Europe. Time magazine (IIRC) called him a traitor for suggesting that Americans would be so stupid to allow such a thing to happen.