Another Pet Peeve

Between some various reading and some office talk peripheral to the new company CEO, a particular bias has crystallized in my mind. I find I really don't like the way information, especially "news" is propagating online these days. And it's only going to get worse.

Cracked is an entertainment site. Everything there should be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes, however, their flash #-of-whatever articles make some very good points.

Now, I've worked at a newspaper for years, and my father did before that. And yet, I've never been a big newspaper reader. Really, I'm not much of a news reader, and I'll admit most of that which I do is now online. But even with the intermediary step of TV, you can see the progression toward "news" that is flashy and fast over news that is researched and corrected. On the internet, it's so much worse. News bits get attention by being provocative, not by being accurate. People pass along angry little sound bites with a link back, and that generates more attention. The process is simple enough. The problem, however...

It's often pieces based on opinion and emotion that generate that replicating interest more than the pieces based on verified facts. A newspaper might have a specific Opinion section, but online there may be no telling the difference between a blog and an actual news article. And while it's much easier to correct online information than something in print, there's no incentive to do so and after the initial burst it's often too late anyway because no one is paying that much attention to the source material. And a lot of times, even if there is a link back to a fact-based article, people never read beyond the reactionary response to it or an attention-grabbing headline.

It just... ugh... It erodes my faith in humanity when people (readers or writers) can't be bothered with looking for any verified facts in a situation and get all riled up over what they see at the surface.

Comments

  1. tashiroAugust 8, 2013 at 5:26 PM

    I object to your well-thought-out opinion and back it with this link to an article I didn't actually read in depth which is actually someone else's opinion to back up my outrage!

    ReplyDelete
  2. marinredwolfAugust 8, 2013 at 6:35 PM

    *gnaws!*

    ReplyDelete
  3. kyn_elwynnAugust 9, 2013 at 12:11 PM

    SEN-SATIONALISM! Not that news outlets (Primarily televised) are immune to this in turn. How many newspaper headlines run which are designed to grab reader attention so that they read the article? Granted the entire article isn't sensationalist, but it's easy to extrapolate where this came from when everyone on the internet becomes DIY journalists.

    ReplyDelete

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