.:the machine begins to crumble:.
the news has always been a point of contention for me. i dislike watching it because, frankly, i think a good deal of it is complete garbage. in a society where capitalism is the standard and image is everything, i will never be convinced that we can have what equates to what journalism is really supposed to be. take, for example, about 6 or 7 years ago, in cincinnati we had the incident where a couple of reporters at the enquirer decided to do a story on chiquita and their bananna farms is south america. the story was focused on the following topics:
- Chiquita secretly controls dozens of supposedly independent banana companies. It also suppresses union activity on the farms it controls.
- Despite its pact with environmental groups to abide by pesticide safety standards, Chiquita subsidiaries have used pesticides in Central America that are banned in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. Chiquita also released harmful toxic chemicals into farms, killing at least one worker in Costa Rica according to a coroner’s report.
- Chiquita’s fruit transport ships have been used to smuggle cocaine into Europe. More than a ton of cocaine was seized from 7 Chiquita ships in 1997. (The Enquirer story says the illegal shipment was traced to lax Colombian security rather than to Chiquita)
- Chiquita executives bribed Colombian officials
- Chiquita called in the Honduran military to evict residents of a farm village; the soldiers forced the farmers out at gunpoint, and the village was bulldozed.
- An employee of a competitor filed a federal lawsuit charging that armed men hired by Chiquita tried to kidnap him in Honduras.
(taken from ‘democracynow.org)
if you want to read about it, go here. after the story was published, carl lindner, a former chairman of the board at chiquita (one of forbes 400 richest people in america…#133 to be precise), decided that he didn’t like that, and so he basically pulled all of his advertising from the enquirer. no details…but let’s just say that this has huge implications for the enquirer. note that mr. lindner was, for all intents and purposes, the owner of the cincinnati reds amongst many, many other things. and again, note that the guy is pretty damn high-up on that forbes list. huge chunk of ad revenue = lots of people lose their jobs @ the enquirer….and you can see where this goes.
so what does the enquirer do? they debunk the story story, apologize for it, and then they fire the two reporters. all is fixed. life in the matrix continues.
let’s also take into account the whole ratings thing. a news station has to keep it’s numbers of viewers high because high numbers = more advertising dollars. so basically, you may be getting news that is compelling…you may not. the news stations are going to give you news that is going to bring the masses, which may possibly be compelling; but it might not necessarily be ‘the news’ in the traditional sense of what the news is supposed to be. remember the michael jackson trial? remember how you couldn’t turn to any channel without having to hear about it? was that really news? no…but it was something that would ‘guarantee’ viewers.
thus, you can see why i feel like the dawn of sites like digg and reddit in combination with the further adaptation of RSS technology and feed readers is great. for those of you unfamiliar with digg, digg is essentially the news according to the community. sure, news stations could potentially post links there about their own stories…but ultimately, the users determine what stories are compelling enough to stay near the top by ‘digging’ (or voting) for them. the more a story is ‘dug’, the longer it stays near the top. and you also have the value of immediate user feedback, so not only do you have the original article, but you also have differing points of opinion right there in order for you to formulate one of your own. in my mind, this is true ‘fair and accurate’ reporting. and in the future, as sites like digg continue to gain popularity, i think this could be a valuable tool for stations to find out what people really want to know about at a moments notice instead of force feeding them garbage.
another good innovative example of the expanding use of RSS/feeds is Yahoo! Pipes. this is a really cool web 2.0 app that allows you to build a custom feed tool. so, let’s say that you want to information on how many sightings of bigfoot there are every day in the 500 mile vicinity of zimbabwe. you can build your app to go check out sites or other feeds that have this kind of information and deliver it steaming hot to the front door of your feed reader. in all seriousness…a more practical application might be that you’re a music fanatic and you live in city like austin. if you live in austin, you know that there are a billion music venues out there with their own sites and music schedules. you could build a pipe that basically aggregates all of that information into one single feed for yourself. and you could even narrow that down by specific bands you want to see at any given moment.
right now, for the common user, it’s a little bit of a learning curve too do this…but it is far and away much easier to learn than, say, programming. you can equate it to something like the use of a hammer. you don’t necessarily have to know how to forge a hammer in order for you to become an expert in its use, and it’s far easier for the common person to become an expert hammer user than an expert hammer forger.
digg is not without its problems. advertisers and other people looking to make a buck have figured out that you can ‘influence’ (i.e. pay off) people to digg stories. but the concept is still sound, and digg is doing everything they can to negate this, which you have to respect.
so…make use of these tools to make yourself a better, smarter person. offsetting the number of complete morons is always swell.
