Journalism’s #1 challenge: the diminishing status of truth.
Here’s the one story you must read this week.
The Guardian’s Katharine Viner has a wonderful analysis of how technology is impacting journalism, diminishing the status of “truth”, and shaping how people perceive what the news is. After you read it, you’ll see recent events (Brexit, Trump’s rise, European populism…) with another perspective, as well as understand what’s been happening in this social and algorithmic-driven world. Hopefully, it’ll make you want to join the fight for the preservation of a “business model that serves and rewards media organisations that put the search for truth at the heart of everything”.
A truly remarkable and inspiring essay, that you can find at this link.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
Excerpt:
“We are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob.
What is common to these struggles — and what makes their resolution an urgent matter — is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth. This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, as this year has made very clear, that we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows.
Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true — and technology has made it very easy for these “facts” to circulate with a speed and reach that was unimaginable in the Gutenberg era (or even a decade ago). A dubious story about Cameron and a pig appears in a tabloid one morning, and by noon, it has flown around the world on social media and turned up in trusted news sources everywhere. This may seem like a small matter, but its consequences are enormous.”
