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Google's Experimental Newsroom Avoids Negative Headlines
theodp writes: After Brazil's dramatic World Cup defeat by Germany, writes NPR's Aarti Shahani, Google's experimental newsroom focused on search trends that didn't rub salt in Brazil's wounds, choosing to not publish a single trend on Brazilian search terms. Copywriter Tessa Hewson said they were just too negative. "We might try and wait until we can do a slightly more upbeat trend." It's a decision that puzzles Shahani, but producer Sam Clohesy explained, "a negative story about Brazil won't necessarily get a lot of traction in social." In old-school newsrooms, if it bleeds, it leads. But because this new newsroom is focused on getting content onto everyone's smartphone, marketing expert Rakesh Agrawal says, editors may have another bias: to comb through the big data in search of happy thoughts.
we say bad stuff only when it makes us look good.
Without the usual diet of bad stuff happening what will they use to feed their various fears and neuroses?
.. israel has asked 30,000 of it's citizens to prepare for a community outreach program in the gaza strip, where they intend to engage locals in what's expected to be highly impactful face to face cultural exchanges
.. is the arctic the next greatest beach resort haven? it just might be!
... and finally, we re-introduce Blinky-san - the superfish everyone has known and loved.. leading the way in sushi dinners that leave you glowing with excitement!
Thank you Google for protecting me from reality no one should have to know about bad things that happen, in fact, why should we know anything at all except for Google approved happy thoughts. Every year Google seems to do something that makes me hate them more and more. So fuck you Google - you're a bunch of authoritarian asshats who think you should control the information we have access to while trying to turn everyone into your personal little database to mine and sell info from. Just go fuck yourselves.
I don't want upbeat headlines. I want the news.
That will include good and bad headlines.
This sounds like a stupid idea, only tell people the upbeat things and let them live in blissful ignorance of what's actually happening in the world. The world doesn't work like that.
What next, not telling us when governments misbehave, or when some atrocity happens so we don't all get sad?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I included the word "doom" in a post and it did not go to the newsfeed. Changed the word and then it goes. Nazis would be thrilled to see this.
I seem to recall reading about a similar trend back in the 40's. Took quite a few "wins" over various countries until the aggressors were called on it. Wasn't quite sports related, mind you.
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
One must ask, what good is news that filters?
And to understand the answer, one must consider the vantage point from which those who filter the news are viewing the world.
It's up there.
Less-than-poetic version:
Dude, think about who is doing the filtering - people with power. Once you realize that, it's easy to see what "good" they feel will come from the practice - keeping the proles fat, blind, and complacent.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
These are the experts. They have their journalism degrees. They are news professionals. They know what we should be reading.
We don't understand this because we are too stupid. We are hicks. We don't have the same respect they do for polishing and smoke being blown in our faces. We don't understand how the 4th estate should be running the world.
God bless Google for protecting fans of Brazil's soccer team. I suppose if the humiliating defeat wasn't enough to send them over the edge, the endless parade of articles pointing out the humungous ASS KICKING they received, would. FYI there was rioting after the match but I guess Google figured it could have escalated to a global catastrophe...
need a real journalist to lead their marketing efforts.
For one, you don't edit the news. You relay the facts as is.
If you want to have your audience read about your opinions, you clearly mark that an "Editorial" and then go crazy on your side of things.
Future newsreaders don't need a platform that's gonna censor the news they receive. Google would take a big PR hit from this. think it through.
Sergey Brin said his vision was to "make information come to the people" That's kinda what you're trying to do. The slippery slope is the point where you decide who lives and who dies.
Why can’t we tell them what they want to hear?
Anchorman 3: The Legend Goes Webscale
Frankly, I have to say that this is even more Orwellian and pernicious than government-backed spying.
The idea that an ostensibly-objective source in the private sector - simply by the good fortune of it's overwhelming market power - can ensure that we all have happythink by subtly 'managing' the news feeds... is terrifying.
-Styopa
A few months ago I was trying to look up the latest figures on the Ebola outbreak. All I could find through most news cites were BS articles that wasted 3/4 of their space on the background of what Ebola is and where Sierra Leone is. In my searching I stumbled across a Daily Map Archive from the EU commission.
Each day they bring a new map with news from around the world. Succinct news, showing where it is geographically, with actual figures and no other bullshit. Granted, it's nearly all bad news...but I've learned so much about events around the world that the major news outlets don't cover (too much time covering important things like Brazil Exploitation Theatre or the latest breaking news out of Hollywood).
Thine linken: http://ercportal.jrc.ec.europa...
Coincidentally, their map today is of that very same Ebola outbreak. Things are not looking good.
"Hey, let's blatantly spin the news by using out-and-out censorship!". Fuck you Google, what the hell do you think you're doing? The news is the news, good, bad, or indifferent. It is the duty of a news agency to report the news, not filter it. What you're doing is no different than some government propaganda engine.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The filter bubble is bringing 1984 to realization in ways that no one ever imagined.
Proverbs 21:19
They seem to be talking about Google Trends, where they are currently making cutesy graphs of what people are searching for about the World Cup.
Calling this a "newsroom" seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is NOT "Google News" where I see "humiliation", "shame" and "misery" in the top stories when searching for "Brazil World Cup".
This had me really confused (and it seems like many of the readers here as well), but the article and summary are misleading.
> I remember a time when the news was reported and read. Nothing more nothing less. How people accepted the news was left up to the viewer, reader, or listener. Now we have flavored news,
In those happy times, an editor decided which stories he wanted to assign reporters to. Before "the news was read", someone wrote it, and the author had their biases. If you look at the news stories from many years ago covering two different politicians doing the same thing, you'll find the stories read quite differently depending on which party the politician was associated with.
The newspapers and television stations of yesteryear were just as interested in selling ads as today's are. I think the biggest difference is the level of honesty. Sean Hannity will TELL you that he's a conservative. Peter Jennings and Dan Rather pretended to be objective.
So it might make me happy to know some bad news, like my Bank just got hacked.This is nothing but trying to put a happy face on censorship. I hate "search trends" reports and articles. I wish they would factually publish that actual trends with no filtering. that would be truly interesting. I am sure this has never been done. If the trends have been real in the past then it really proves how stupid most people are. It normally appears to be as pop fluff and the same stuff the MSM is pushing as issues of the day.
Google's prime directive is to make money.
There's the answer to today's question.
Those who don't understand and embrace that first sentence may well start babbling about free speech, 4th estate, bias, or any number of equally irrelevant issues having nothing to do with Google's business model.
Google does not owe anyone the "news," any more than does the news entertainment venues like Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and the likes.
If you're interested in news in the traditional sense, good luck and please remember where you parked.
Money-making ventures report to the shareholders -- not the news desk.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Sure. Because the honest and straight-shooting New York Times and MSNBC would publish — indeed, revel in — every piece of bad news...
As long a Republican can be blamed for it — justly or otherwise — of course...
Iraq, for example, was a "quagmire" in 2003 — when the enemy was defeated and on the run. And so it was in 2006, when only minor insurrections remained. But it is not a quagmire today — with the enemy having recaptured vast swaths of the country — the same sophisticated publication is advising us on how to avoid the disaster, not admitting, is has already happened — with the Nobel Peace Prize winner at the helm and a direct result of his decisions and orders.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
For centuries researchers have lamented the difficulty in studying society and accurately running social experiments. Now for the first time in human history companies such as Google and Facebook have a real window into how ideas and emotion spread. They can see the relationships between philosophy, religion, gender and culture in how they define our dealings with each other.
I disagree with what they're doing and how they're doing it. Yet I pause and think to myself... In the same position, could I resist the temptation to pry and to tinker? Power corrupts, those who deny their power deny their abuse of it. It's frightening what they hold in their hands, the power to shape society and attempt to bend it to their will. The law of unintended consequences is going to bite down on them HARD.
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I'm also surprised everyone still hates Germany this much and considers that match a defeat rather than a victory.
Too soon?
It is impossible for there to be any other kind. The sum total of what happens on the earth is far beyond the ability of anyone or anything to track or follow. Most of it is not relevant to you, of course. Any news you read is, and of necessity, must be, filtered. The only question is how it is filtered.
Your view that occurances can be easily and definitively defined as "news" or "not news" is incredibly naive.
No, you remember a time when the biases in selecting what would be news and what would not be were better hidden.
Friend google has prescribed me 3 doses of happy happy to be taken at the nearest confession booth.
True, but the same advice applies everywhere. No news outlet or aggregator is without bias.
What is this, life -- or 2nd grade?
It seems outright condescending to try to make it all happy news. People die. Things break. Teams lose. Wars happen. DEAL WITH IT! Don't hide it!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Life is 2nd grade. Or perhaps "Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten"?
Adults are merely conditioned and learn to ACT "mature," under the masks and habits we are all children... Psychology focuses so much on childhood for good reason.
Humans will avoid negative stimulation; it's natural behavior. If you have too much freedom and always have positive options you will avoid negative things ALL THE TIME. This will result in a lack of contrast which is necessary for your mind to function since just about everything you think is relative interpretation. What you end up with is a "wimp" who experiences just as much pain and suffering from a pin prick as a physically abused person does when being hospitalized.
People so fragile they commit suicide because of anonymous insults posted against them online... People so fragile they can be controlled by minor fears and name calling--- and most threatening, people being made incompetent citizens by being unable to face the bad news necessary for them to participate in their democracy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The newspapers and television stations of yesteryear were just as interested in selling ads as today's are.
This is the most important point. Everyone on Slashdot always chimes in and says things like "You're not really Facebook's customer -- the companies who want your information and want to run ads are," but people seem to forget that this has been true for a lot of things for a LONG time.
The "news" has rarely been about conveying unbiased facts -- it's about selling a product. And before ad revenue was so important, most newspapers were even more sensationalist, since they depended solely on news boys pitching crazy stories that would attract an audience.
The primary goal of most news sources is to make things as sensationalist as possible without alienating their sponsors or their audience... and that's always been the goal, even centuries ago. People turn their heads to watch car wrecks and freaks -- the vast majority of people don't want "unbiased coverage," and even those who say they do don't generally want to hear things that disagree with their worldview.
I think the biggest difference is the level of honesty. Sean Hannity will TELL you that he's a conservative. Peter Jennings and Dan Rather pretended to be objective.
This is true, but I wouldn't quite say that nothing has changed in terms of the tone of news. We did go through a somewhat less sensationalist era for televised news in the early decades of television, but that was an aberration in the history of journalism. But of course you're right: there still were biases, even if they were less overt.
Now, thanks to Google, bad news is no news! But, as no news is good news, we could conclude that bad news is good news. Is this good, bad or newsworthy?