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Media today
Jun. 17th, 2004 12:22 amI get most of my news from the internet. Some from mainstream sites, such as The New Yok Times, and The BBC, in addition to blogs such as Salam Pax ("The Baghdad Blogger") and Riverbend, and of course the specialty sites who just repost information from other sources, like China Space Flight news and , and a host of others that I check out semi-regularly.
Anyway, a recent article (or is it "entry"?) on Back to Iraq got me thinking about the advantage of online news over its predecessors. Print media generally has the advantage over TV in that it can go a lot more in-depth in an individual story, offering a lot more information about the background, context, or just the details of a particular instance. TV has the advantage of immediacy - nowadays, with satellite communication, they can report a story anywhere on the planet as it happens. Of course, if there's any science reporting at all, it tends to be woefully inadequate, and you have to sit through the stories of which sports team scored more points in whatever game against some other team, and which celebrity is rumoured to be sleeping with whom first. But I digress.
Anyway, the internet tends to have both of these advantages at once. News can get updated immediately, and text entries can carry as much, or more (not being limited to column inches) as newspapers and magazines. With big-budget sites like those mentioned above, they have the resources to actually research a story before posting it, as well. It's not just a bunch of individual geeks posting whatever they think of anymore. And even if the story doesn't carry all the background you want, you're only a google-click away from more information on any subject than you can ever want to know.
Now, the old argument against internet reporting is that there's no filter. No editorial review, so any random nutjob can post anything they want as news. With professional media in the act, this isn't necessarily true. Even when it is, with dozens of people blogging from a particular area reporting the same stories, you can quickly learn which one's are reporting accurate information, and a clearer picture emerges. Also, with the New York Times recently admitting to (and apologizing for) publishing White House press releases without fact-checking, and Fox News firing a reporter for refusing to report a story she knew to be fallacious, and then arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend their right to do so, I'm thinking the much-vaunted professional media filter is highly over-rated.
Anyway, a recent article (or is it "entry"?) on Back to Iraq got me thinking about the advantage of online news over its predecessors. Print media generally has the advantage over TV in that it can go a lot more in-depth in an individual story, offering a lot more information about the background, context, or just the details of a particular instance. TV has the advantage of immediacy - nowadays, with satellite communication, they can report a story anywhere on the planet as it happens. Of course, if there's any science reporting at all, it tends to be woefully inadequate, and you have to sit through the stories of which sports team scored more points in whatever game against some other team, and which celebrity is rumoured to be sleeping with whom first. But I digress.
Anyway, the internet tends to have both of these advantages at once. News can get updated immediately, and text entries can carry as much, or more (not being limited to column inches) as newspapers and magazines. With big-budget sites like those mentioned above, they have the resources to actually research a story before posting it, as well. It's not just a bunch of individual geeks posting whatever they think of anymore. And even if the story doesn't carry all the background you want, you're only a google-click away from more information on any subject than you can ever want to know.
Now, the old argument against internet reporting is that there's no filter. No editorial review, so any random nutjob can post anything they want as news. With professional media in the act, this isn't necessarily true. Even when it is, with dozens of people blogging from a particular area reporting the same stories, you can quickly learn which one's are reporting accurate information, and a clearer picture emerges. Also, with the New York Times recently admitting to (and apologizing for) publishing White House press releases without fact-checking, and Fox News firing a reporter for refusing to report a story she knew to be fallacious, and then arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend their right to do so, I'm thinking the much-vaunted professional media filter is highly over-rated.
