Dave Winer has a pretty strong reaction to an LA Times editorial about Google News. Comparing the news media to the Catholic Church is a bit of a stretch, though what I think he's pointing to is the concept of ex cathedra, when the Pope (infrequently) is said to be speaking infallibly. In this comparison, the existing news media is straining to achieve the same position -- the ability to be the sole authority/the decider on given topics and issues.
That's clearly not the case, and going this far to the extreme muddies a much more important point -- who decides what is relevant to the population at large, and who decides who gets to have a voice in the debate? The Google news service is off because it says that only the people *in* a story have a voice; so it's already at least one degree off. Dave's suggestion:
A news story should summarize points of view that are available in full on the newspaper website. The newspapers should try to host the blogs of the people they quote. Instead they cling to the fiction that they have the exclusive wisdom to decide which soundbites and points of view are relevant, and the reader needs nothing more than what they provide. This is wrong, the world is too complicated, and the resources of news organizations are shrinking and our appetite for information is exploding (and the tools for creating and using news are getting better all the time).
Yes, and no. Yes, the world is more complicated, and there are more sources out there for information than ever. But let's go back to the question -- who decides what is news, and who is an authority, and what is fact and what is opinion? One of my biggest points of frustration with anything news is the implicit striving for balance, even in the face of reason. In his book "Kindly Inquisitors," Jonathan Rauch makes the point that simply believing something is not enough, one must have the experience, the knowledge and the understanding to step forth onto the field of ideas and defend belief with reason. If one can't do that, then get off the field. The media today strive for balance -- which means that we are subjected to the near ridiculous recitation of belief vs. knowledge. Look no further than the so-called debate between evolution and creationism. One is founded in science, the other in belief, and to cite creationism in an attempt to find "balance" is absurd; the issue is decided (for now) until more data develops. Ditto for climate change, and juxtaposing science with opinion does us all no favors.
So in looking at the media, what's the upside of asking editors and writers to do less editing, and asking us to do more, as we'll see when newspapers start running blogs and opinion pieces next to news stories, with no way of quickly judging the relative worth of fact or opinions expressed?
What we should be asking for is the media to do more of what it is good at -- take a great pass at determining who real experts are in a given arena, ask the right questions, do the right research, then present the results. Annotate better. Share more. Post more transcripts. Ask hard follow up questions. Don't let people in power get away (again) with lying to us.
We rarely live in a binary world, where things are either zeros or one, right or wrong, no grays, all black and white. The power is being able to see the gray more clearly, not to see more of the black and the white.