Friday, 10 October 2008

The Press

Google gives up on “wisdom of crowds,” goes with establishment journalism


Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

In a world of disinformation, which is the future, brands are the solution.  Brand affinity is hard wired and fundamental to the human condition – who you trust and who you don’t.  People want real value, real information, real leadership and messages of hope.
Jeff Goldstein:
What Schmidt is proposing... is a potential collusion between the major search engines and the “quality” purveyors of information — those who present the “correct” lessons in the “proper” narrative form in order to save us from the “cesspool of disinformation” that is likely to corrupt our opinions and direct us away from the golden road of progressive epistemology...

In other words, search engines will direct readers to the very kind of journalists who they’ve rejected in print, and, perforce, reinforce the hidden narrative biases that people have gone to the internet to escape.
What’s more:
...When asked where the industry ends up if there aren’t outlets willing to pay journalists to create quality content, Mr. Schmidt... [said[1]] that he didn’t have an answer but one thing to look at is whether journalism should be a for-profit enterprise.
Meaning: If the public won’t pay for the kind of “journalism” that meets Schmidt’s approval, they should be forced to subsidize it.  (And remember, a tax exemption is still a “tax expenditure!”)

Funny how progressivism always comes down to compulsion.

(HT:  Protein Wisdom (RTWT), “happyfeet” for the AdAge quote.)

Related:  This discussion at BuzzMachine, in which journalists say, “It’s not our fault,” and reader after reader replies, “It’s your bias, stupid.”
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[1 ]  Irrelrelevant (except to the extent that it exposes the mindset of the reporter) political allusion excised.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 17:19:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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