Twitter, Celebrity, and 24-Hour News

[Thorvald of Lym]

A week or two ago a friend and I were discussing the future of news: specifically, investigative journalism. In my opinion, blogging and the like are undermining traditional news sources (see: daily paper) but are not providing any viable alternative simply because precious few, if any, engage in original research. He countered that services such as Twitter are invaluable, because they can report developing situations in real-time, citing the protests in Iran, specifically the shooting of Nada, as examples.

While this may be useful to people immediately on site, how many of us need to know -indeed, can even respond to- second-by-second developments? Does it honestly make a difference in Joe Slovak's life if he learns about the Australian drought a day earlier? It's the subject of a conversation I had with another friend a few days ago. He said that the need for 24/7 news reports is a misconception propagated by televised stations, and this has contributed to the erosion of journalistic integrity in general. Which brings us to the subject of celebrity news.

When news stations expanded their programming to encompass the entire day, they soon learned that there just isn't enough going on in the world to fit the agenda. Short of making stuff up, they seize hold of the trivial scraps and inflate them far out of proportion. Thus, Michael Jackson's funeral receives as much, if not more attention than the political crisis in Honduras. Top this off with an ADD-approach to presentation, and we come to another concern of mine relating to the second paragraph: when we are bombarded with so much information, so vaguely presented in such a short timeframe, how are we expected to make informed decisions regarding what we are shown? Is the purpose of news to inform, or entertain?

"Two hundred died in the attack. And now to sports."

 

[mrt144]

The problem with Twitter and anything that is adopted in mass use is that it will be co-opted by the very people that proved the original concept novel: exclusion of non useful information to individual users.

 

[cardgame]

Much news is to entertain, but some can actually be informing, like local news covering something that happened locally. At least where I live.

 

[Orange Seeds]

An Article for you:
The Liberal Rag

This is a subject that gravely concerns me. I had a conversation with two of my high school friends at a McDonald's a few days ago because CNN was running a story on MJ above our hamburger indulged heads. I told them, them being good modern cysts, that their inattentiveness towards proper news is leading to the degradation of knowledge even for those like seek it. But their actions will not change. Ultimately it is the consumer that has to create his news source.


A prime example of degrading news is free daily papers. I don't know what exists where you live but a couple of years ago buses, coffee shops and sidewalks were targeted by three free dailies in Vancity(Metro, Dose and 24). All three of those papers being entirely about celebrities, horrosopes and weird new age/hippie/ultra liberal drivel which appeals to the lotus land pot smoking crowd of yours truly's hometown. In the US, I imagine it would appeal to a different crowd depending on demographics.

The problem is that people are abandoning proper newspapers and reading these. I can't even speak to people who read the damn things as i find them so despairing