On the News
Mandy Brown wrote a really good post about the evolution her news-reading behaviour. She started out reading one newspaper and than transitioned to reading many different online news sources. I can absolutely relate to that. I also share the transition in the behavioural pattern of reading news: with the newspaper I read it once in the morning during breakfast; now I’m checking the news all day.
An than Mandy talks about expectations from the news she reads:
I want a reading experience that defends the news from the circus that online advertising creates. I want good storytelling and analysis, not naked facts. I want news that admits and defends its point of view (and acknowledges that there is a truth to be uncovered), not news that parrots the party line while making claims to objectivity. I want long essays on the events at Fukushima and the consequences for nuclear power going forward, not shrieking dispatches of each new fire or setback. I want a history of American engagement in Libya, putting the events of the past few weeks in context. I want twenty thousand words on the recession and its effects on the middle class, not another lone statistic about the unemployment rate. I want thoughtful, investigative journalism that exposes the ways in which our government is failing us, so that we can make it better.
I can say ‘yes’ to each of the points, except for the second item. I do want good storytelling and analysis, but I also want links to the naked facts. When I read about a planned increase in taxes for Diesel fuel where one quoted expert claims that preferring Diesel is bad from an environmental point of view, while car manufactures claim that Diesel is good for the environment, I want links to studies about the different properties of Diesel vs. gasoline with respect to environmental issues. When I read an op-ed about health care, where the author claims that the largest part of the health care costs for a person are incurred in the final year of their lives no matter how long the person lived, I want a link to a statistic supporting the claim. Bonus points for additional links to stats that do not agree and an explanation why they are less credible.
I have another addition to this wish list while we’re at it: I do want news that admits and defends its point of view, and I also want pointers to articles with different points of view.
