Technology and the future of journalism
The “news” coverage of the Tiger Woods SUV accident may give us a glimpse of what the future of journalism looks like, or at least the tabloid version of the future fifth estate.
Celebrity news may well be in the forefront of electronic journalism. If the Tiger Woods auto accident is any indication, we may be in for a future in which journalism looks a great deal like a video game. In this future, facts need not apply. Instead, reporters are willing to make up what they think happened, or what they wish would have happened, and then use the tools of technology to bend the “news” reality to their liking.
A 90-second video-game-like segment produced by Next Media, a Hong Kong-based company with gossipy newspapers there and in Taiwan, may have been last week’s most popular internet video, according to a CNET story. The Next Media animation unit, which is based in the same building as the company’s Taiwanese newspaper, Apple Daily, has scores of programmers, designers, animators (and even actors) on its staff, according to Daisy Li, who is responsible for scripting the unit’s videos.
The animation unit produces about 20 videos a day. Most of those cover events that were not witnessed by reporters or anyone else. There is even some valid question as to whether some of the events that the group animates have actually even occurred at all. The animated “reports” began in November and are based on information gleaned from the Web and Apple Daily’s own reporting. Often, they are just “informed guesses” about what happened. The videos are an attempt to give that conjecture the appearance of fact.
If this is it, the future of journalism is bleak indeed. One can only hope that Rupert Murdoch does not see these and get any ideas about how much they could increase sales. At some level, these attempts are humorous, but that should not hide the fact that much of what is being produced in these videos are lies or twisted truth. That does not serve anyone well except those that are profiting from them. Clearly, these videos need to be taken with a boulder of salt.
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