The invasion of corporate news
ft.com
ft.com
Reactions from publishers and native ad companies were surprisingly positive - some even reached out asking to me add their sites. In general I think a lot of people in publishing are very conflicted about the problem because it gets into journalistic ethics, which are deeply ingrained.
Currently an organization called the IAB provides the standard for the industry, but it's vague and lags behind innovation in native ads [2]. Native ads aren't necessarily bad, but their inconsistency that makes them very deceptive to users. I think publishers would benefit from an updated set of standards that enforce consistent messaging.
That said, I hope it works well and becomes widely used. The publishers should be putting that alert on their pages themselves.
I was sensitive to performance when I wrote it - in most cases detection rules are single selectors. It won't run anything on sites not in the db. No library dependencies.
There's a phantomjs test suite that flags false positives and negatives. Of course, I can't personally compile a list of every site with sponsored content, so if it's not on the list the addon won't display anything.
If you're interested, the code is open source at http://github.com/typpo/ad-detector.
Hard for me to say whether it can spot ads that you can't. Many people think they aren't susceptible to ads like these, and I'm one of them, but I built this for peace of mind. Sponsored content can be easy to miss. My favorite examples are this Yahoo news article on climate change (written by an oil company), and a Newsweek article on personal injury lawyers:
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-cooling-real-inconveni... [2] http://www.newsweek.com/10-best-personal-injury-attorneys
I'd gladly form an open IAB
In my experience, most people form opinions by effectively shopping among the various narratives offered by the many forms of media, including those described in the article, and picking the one they like most -- as if they were shopping for a sweater to wear. Then they base their opinion on the chosen narrative, but of course once the questions are framed and facts established, their 'opinion' is preordained.
That is no accident. The narratives often are created by interests whose goal is to manipulate public opinion, and their stories are repeated widely, wittingly by their agents and unwittingly by everyone else. This isn't conspiracy theory; you can read plenty of legitimate research where this process is openly described; even the vocabulary you probably use to discuss public issues often is carefully constructed by someone. Public opinion can be manipulated to vary widely from the facts (consider climate change, Saddam Hussein's connection to 9/11, etc. etc.) and also it is an extremely valuable asset. Manipulating it can change history, and create and destroy political and personal fortunes -- and nations, as well as start/end wars, kill/save hundreds of millions of people, and make/lose trillions of dollars ('regulation is choking the experts on Wall Street'). So of course there are many, many people who will manipulate it. There is a game being played and most people don't know it is happening, much less that they are its objects.
How does this happen? I think many people are swayed by the big lies -- they can't believe so much is so deceitful. Also, in my experience the best educated, smartest people I know are often the most easily led; perhaps they are hamstrung by their intellectual confidence, because I often hear them repeating one side or another's talking points and underlying propaganda. Finally, it's hard to educate anyone on this issue; there is no nice way to say, 'you've been fooled' and 'most of what you say is someone else's propaganda'.
But how does it happen? It's not true that society can rely on citizens to sort truth from falsehood; the reality is that people are easily led. It is up to the elites in our society, including journalists, to ensure they are getting something closer to the truth. I doubt there is a solution for corrupt elites.
To summarize, the fundamental problem, whether you like it or not, is also breaching the "other side" with truth or opinion or whatever. This media Balkanization is dangerous, and what you point out is that it is greasing the wheels of this operation.
So stop judging, read Aljazeera, RT, Iranian news feeds, and Chinese, Fox. I have read it all. You need to average out the facts and also see what opinions are being sold in the extremes, as that is the only way out of being mind-fucked in this system.
The hypocrisy of many knowledgable people is astounding and when you dig deeper, you realise they are unaware of it. That is the depths to which we have sunk.
To rebut many of the common arguments it would take hrs given the layers of spin that needs to be peeled.
The mainstream media gets to talk to hundreds of millions for a couple of hours every week. At least it's a bit better now that there's the internet.
Its known that the numbers are single digit millions, for individual shows.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/category/ratings/top-news/e...
Probably double digit millions if you add it all together. There is likely a lot of overlap. "News junkies" watching ten newscasts equals ten views, but doesn't equal ten different viewers.
Maybe triple digits if you add the entire world together across all languages and cultures. But that might be pushing it.
The primary use of the news is signalling positions to the other side. Nobody is supposed to learn anything from it, just signal to other groups.
The "uneducated" who are less exposed are less apt to have their brains so washed away. I think it takes significant exposure to a lot of different media and narratives over a sustained period of time to develop an awareness of how untrue our news really is and how to read between the lines not to find out what's true, but what probably isn't. The average "educated" person might read a few news articles a day and watch the evening news. That doesn't cut it.
What the first group is, is more comfortable in processing and manipulating abstract ideas. This factor makes you more vulnerable to propaganda because of the natural tendency to dismiss data that does not confirm your working hypothesis as "noise". I am pretty sure highly focused propaganda will exploit specific cognitive biases of the "educated" too.
The second group thinks in a more concrete fashion, so it is harder to dismiss conflicting evidence for them. So, they will get a gut feeling that there is something wrong with the hypothesis/propaganda, though they not necessarily can pinpoint what that might be. Attempts to make sense of these strange Rorscharch patterns provide the raw material for plenty conspiracy theories, too.
Everywhere I look it's just another battlefront in the information war.
I mean people with the power to shape public opinion, from political and business leaders to other public figures to some people in the media industry. Many are described in that FT article. It's not rigidly defined and there is no membership card, but clearly a NY Times reporter is among the elite and the vast majority of people have no such power.
As a side note, notice that left-wing public interest groups seem to have faded; from Greenpeace to union leaders, they rarely seem to be in the public debate any more.
I up-voted you before I got to your last paragraph. I wish I could undo my vote.
Think about what your statement says about democracy. It's a fair position to take on a question that has been debated for centuries. But did you realize you were taking such a position?
> Think about what your statement says about democracy. It's a fair position to take on a question that has been debated for centuries. But did you realize you were taking such a position?
I can imagine a few things you might be implying, but I'm not sure which one. I'd be very interested in learning what you mean.
> "For every working journalist in America there, are now 4.6 PR people, up from 3.2 a decade ago"
We can respin (pun intended) that in slightly different way: journalists in US are outnumbered by spin doctors more than 4 to 1. That's a sad figure for anyone who cares about finding out the truth.
Journalists do not themselves uncover truths. They uncover material and details that can point to a truth. And the core of the problem is that journalism is slow. In the time it takes to fact-check an investigative article, the spinmeisters have had ample time to do what they do best. Namely, set up smoke and mirrors.
The power asymmetry is painful, and I have no doubt about this being even a recent thing. There's a quote attributed to Mark Twain on the subject: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA#t=26
Basically, 100s of local newscasts are all using the exact same script, even on trivial human interest stories where they could improvise.
Heck, even the reporting on the Boston Massacre is a classic of bias.
Agreed; people naturally exaggerate the good old days and forget how advertisers and other interests often owned [EDIT: figuratively and literally] many media outlets. Maybe it's better that those powers publish their own stories; at least they generally own up to it rather than hiding behind journalists for legitimacy.
But I also disagree strongly: It's a matter of degree, of course. No journalism ever was written, edited and published by wise saints, but some is much better than others. There is Fox News and there is the Financial Times; neither is purely bad or good, but one is far better than the other. The problems discussed in the article make journalism significantly less valuable and reliable, and there is no good substitute for it. The public simply will lack good information and will believe more false information.
I used to believe so too. And I also believed that the BBC was far better than either, because they may have failed to be unbiased, but they definitely made a goodwill effort towards it.
That's what I used to believe until the recent Scottish referendum, when I started observing the actual behaviour of the media closely. And then you start to see that there is no difference. The BBC were just as nasty, ignorant, lying amoral shits as Fox news generally are.
I would look at the Google News feed and watch as the Daily Mail and the BBC and the Financial Times would compete to update the same lying crap to basically spam the newsfeed so that they would always be the top story. Truth be damned.
I love the world, and I love most people because people are generally great and mostly do the right thing, but you are not cynical enough.
It's not like we can approach the Scottish independence as a physics experiment: run it in a controlled environment, adjust for different variables, and expect the results to be replicated in another laboratory. So in this case I'm going to be skeptical of anyone who claims there's a "truth" that I can choose and sleep soundly at night knowing I made the right choice. It's too complex of an issue - socially, politically, and economically.
I'm cynical enough to suspect you're not unbiased either and that you have a self-interest in one side of the Scottish independence discussion.
Too bad for both of us that cynicism have never solved any problem.
Even after the referendum, the reporting of attacks (by a large contingent of pro-union thugs) on peaceful Yes supporters who gathered in Glasgow's George Square last Friday was heavily skewed and managed:
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/9773-...
The selective editing by the BBC's Nick Robinson, who didn't get the answer he wanted from the First Minister, during his international press conference on the 11th of September was another example:
http://wingsoverscotland.com/out-in-the-open/
I used to be proud of the BBC and thought the license fee was good value for money. But since 2006 they haven't had a single penny from me. It's a morally corrupt organisation.
"If it bleeds it leads" is a very old saying. So is "history is written by the victors". And it's normal for news to run hysterical stories, because those sell.
But there's a more general problem. There are some fields I know a great deal about. Whenever I see a news story about one of those fields, they're almost always pathetically wrong. This is because the journalists are reporting on something they have no understanding of. I've also seen them report on events I have personal knowledge of, again, they get it all wrong, usually because they're in a hurry to get the story "in the can" and simply don't care to fact check.
My father was a historian, and in our discussions we'd often wonder how much of conventionally accepted historical truth is utterly wrong.
I have come to accept that the general media cannot talk about any subject that requires domain knowledge coherently.
Not that you're wrong, but every subject requires domain knowledge; the depth required and specific domain differ, of course.
I have been concerned for a long time about corporate control of the few large news outlets like MSNBC, Fox, CNN, etc. I think that they all filter the news and enforce a slanted version of the news not in the public interest. There are some organizations like Democracy Now that do a much better job.
Local news has been in a death spiral since the early 1990s, and no longer exists in most places that aren't big enough to have skyscrapers. I think there's a strong case that this is better than nothing, and that the honesty of its patronage limits the damage (and will encourage competition).
This is not theoretical to me. I grew up in the area, and do not feel that McClatchy (who basically has a monopoly) has managed its East Bay mastheads in an effective or useful manner.
When television came to dominate the media landscape in the 60s, it also redefined news and media. Now social media and the internet is starting to do the same, in its own way. Inherent properties and biases of this new medium are distorting the types of content that fit in it.
We've operated in a world where influence is more subtle and it was easy to pretend that the news was unbiased. It wasn't, especially at the local level. The reporting wasn't propaganda, but the editorial board directs the reporters -- and the juiciest news is always the stuff that isn't in the paper, or is buried in section Z somewhere.
One of my relatives was a cabinet-level official in a mid-sized city in the 80s and 90s, when a hotshot reporter drove a Porsche. Unless it was a personal scandal affecting the Mayor, or people were marching in the streets, my relative could either make a phone call or have his boss make a phone call and kill/neuter a story.
If you look at news in the American Revolutionary era through the Civil War, it was big mess of different news outlets with very well defined biases. It's different than the late 20th century model of Woodward and Bernstein in the paper and a fatherly figure with good hair on TV, but it worked and will work again.
... and both the editorial board and reporters select how to cover the news.
Some of my relatives were active on a significant political issue in the 80s and 90s, holding state-level positions in a well-known organization. As a teen, I would occasionally attend rallies, protests, etc. (sometimes with counter-rallies/protests across the street) and watch from a distance, and then I'd watch the news coverage that evening. The camera always seemed to fall on awkwardly dressed senior citizens from our side, ignoring our speakers who were often young professional women who were excellent public speakers, and ignoring the large and diverse crowd. And the camera never showed the guys on the other side making threatening remarks (though I know they got those remarks on film); they'd instead seek comment from a lawyer in their office to give a calm presentation of that side. So even though they covered the event, the coverage gave the impression that one side was professional and well-spoken while the other was out of touch and weird, which was exactly the opposite of the impression I got from being there.
I understand that they did this to make a 'story' out of it, it was not really malicious - but I was surprised to see such a blatant manipulation done in a BBC documentary.
For the curious, the issue was nobegvba (rot13).
http://vimeo.com/85948693 The Century of the Self - Part 1
[1] - http://www.editorsweblog.org/2010/01/21/uk-government-to-inv...
"emerge in the age of hyper-local digital news brands such as Patch"
Patch is closing down and firing people. Ours closed. It does not appear to be a survivable business model, although they gave it a good try and it was interesting reading while it lasted.
Wow.
You can see this near arrogance flow through much of the anecdotes. "Ugh, more and more PR people trying to get my attention all the time. It's sooo annoying." "Ugh, PR girls are even trying to sleep with me, but you can't compromise my editorial integrity." It's perfectly represents the entitlement of the gatekeeper role that must've been built into that last generation of journalists.
Sorry for the mild rant but sites like Hacker News and Reddit have shown that readers are plenty smart, and capable of sifting through the bullshit, whether produced by a corporation, a newspaper, or an individual. When news media held a monopoly on distribution and there were few sources of info, I understand the danger of a corporation holding the sole lifeline of info. That's no longer the case.
Oh? I've had the opposite impression. That Reddit adequately demonstrates that readers are impulsive, poorly informed, narrow-minded, and easily manipulated. On subreddits with the most passive style of moderation, the comment threads are a self-congratulatory shouting match where any contradictory information is shouted down regardless of its merit. On the other hand, where conversations are productive and good information is rewarded, those subreddits are moderated strictly and editorial control is frequently used to remove distracting comments or guide conversations.
In my opinion, Reddit validates the usefulness of a gatekeeper for news.
Journalism outlets, at least those operated in the traditional manner with a wall between business and copy, explicitly eschew this goal. The whole point of "church and state" separation in news outlets is to enable journalists to write about stories that readers probably wouldn't upvote, but is important for them to see. This sort of story will be given _much_ less exposure on sites that are single-mindedly optimizing for likability in general.
I think traditionally-operated news outlets serve a socially-useful function, and that the metamorphosis of these outlets into likability optimizers means everyone loses out. You may disagree, and that's your perogative!
The shared links that pop up all over my Facebook from friends and family who I otherwise wouldn't think would believe such nonsense says otherwise.
I still however believe people are smart on average, and are becoming better and better at thinking critically. Possibly a bit naive, but I hope as information becomes more accessible, people will only develop a better sense for what's bullshit (again, no matter who it's produced by).
It's not that they are not capable or smart, it's that they don't bother fact checking every single story or seek out opposing analysis or interpretation, especially for things like US foreign policy.
This has an opportunity cost.
1) Auto-categorization: Great if it works. I understand it's beta, but it isn't working now. For example, almost every story is labeled 'Controversy' including "High school football player gives best post game interview ever.", "Chocolate lab after the dog park" and other similar stories.
2) Auto-curation: Again, great if it works and I know it's beta, but the Technocrat view currently offers "LPT: The correct & easiest way to safely break up a dog fight", "California boy gets detention for sharing school-prepared lunch with another student", etc.
Those are hard problems; if you could solve them, count me in. Possibly I misunderstand your goals, but as the other poster said, they could use more explanation.
2) Where you using either the default views (technocrat for instance) or your own personal feeds? The articles selected are only as good as your feed filters on your different sites and the settings selected in the menu.
Thank you for taking the time to look at it!
2) I was using the Technocrat default view.
Sagebump sits ontop of your different aggregator site accounts.
BTW Thank you for taking the time to look at it!