When I started thinking about what the New News Media would mean for the average person a few years from now I decided that if a person wanted they could have a more balanced news experience than the one they might have had 10 years ago. The ability to choose what their news is about and where their news comes from allows people to curate their own news 'paper'. When I first realized this, I thought it was great...a newspaper made only by me. Then I myself had to take an unbiased look at what the repercussions of this might be.

Look at the cover of a news paper, or on a news website like The New York Times we are presented with a fairly diverse array of stories. They may not be stories that you want to read, but glancing at page one of any news paper, even for just a moment, you are able to get the gist of what is happening in the world around you. My concern is, what happens when your page one is filled with your interests? Will a lack of outsider curation narrow your perspective further?

When a single person is allowed to decide what to read solely based on personal interests and beliefs, is what they're reading really an unbiased view of the world? Will people really seek the opinions of those who are different than them? It depends on the importance a person places on a diverse perspective and knowledge set.

What I am talking about is obtaining a broader view of what is happening in the world today, not just those things that have a direct impact on the reader. I fear that a purely reader curated news media would give way to a population of people who are relatively ignorant. They would be well versed in their areas of interest but completely oblivious to the world they live in.

As an early adapter myself I have experienced this. With multiple tabs of my Netvibes account dedicated to technology, art, culture and advertising and only one catch-all tab called 'General' where I have a couple of RSS feeds containing general headline news. Aside from the absence of diverse topics, there are so many things to read that I become overwhelmed. While there is a lack of hierarchy that allows me to absorb the news in an unbiased fashion, finding the big stories quick becomes an issue. It is obvious that even my own curation of my news has become slightly one dimensional. I have no idea what is going on in Myanmar right now, and the headlines on the New York Times website tell me I probably should.

User-curated news is a great thing. It provides control over sources and perspectives that people really haven't had before now. It will be interesting to see what larger cultural impacts this has on our societies globally. If no one was reading about politics and the world would we really care how much Bush was spending on Iraq, or that people were dying their every day? Will we come to a point where our lack of global awareness leads us to betray our fellow human? I think if we fail to diversify our news topics, that is possible. That being said, I should probably go read that article on Myanmar now.

User Profile
Name
Bob O'Flaurghty
Age
29 years old
Location
Brooklyn, New York
Occupation
Graphic DesignerThe Scenario: As Bob goes through an average day he wants to get information on certain news items and topics.

When Bob wakes up in the morning he makes his coffee and sits down in front of his computer, he opens up Google News to see what the latest headlines are. Since Google News is a computer-generated news site, he knows he will not experience any bias from any particular publisher as far as what stories are most important. The hierarchy of the page allows all of the stories equal importance (unlike the newspaper), so he can browse until he finds a story that seems interesting.

He selects an article entitled "Busy Day at Court Handling Sect's Children," he looks at the links to sources where he could read the same story and decides that his best bet is The New York Times. He clicks the link. Once on The New York Times website he begins reading. About half way through the article talks about the "Yearning for Zion ranch," Bob has never heard of this before so he clicks the link to learn more about this ranch. There he is able to see an image of the ranch along with several other stories about the ranch, he is satisfied now that he can put an image with a name and clicks the browsers back button to return him to the browser to finish reading the article. (more...)

A couple of days ago I asked you to imagine a world in which news media could possibly be neutral. The problem is...I don't actually think that news media can ever be neutral. With humans running the show a natural bias is always assumed, if computers ran the show their analysis of humans would be skewed due to the unpredictable nature of people. I do feel however that changes in the Internet over the past few years have altered the way we get our news in a really interesting way, possibly moving the news we consume towards a less biased place.

The introduction of RSS feeds, APIs, vlogging, blogging, and other social media sites have dramatically altered the way in which many people consume informational/news content. Audiences are no longer tethered to a piece of paper or television at a certain time to receive the news for that day. They don't have to hope that the news will cover the topic that is important to them, nor do they have to remain bound to a news source they don't like simply because that's all that is available. Consuming news content doesn't have to be a one-way passive activity anymore.

The audience can now choose where they get their news from, what their news is about and when they receive the news. More importantly the user can compare the same story from multiple sources to check accuracy, comment on stories, read expert (and not so expert) analysis of a situation, search the Internet for raw facts regarding what they have read and if they feel inclined...they could even add their own opinion, analysis or knowledge to the mix.

With the Internet at our finger tips we have a broader base of news and information to choose from. By diversifying the information channels we consume, we are able to see multiple view points, therefore giving us a more vast set of information from which we can formulate our own opinions (or biases). So while this method of consuming the news does not eradicate biases from individual news outlets it does collectively give the audience a more neutral experience with the news. By giving the audience a set of stories from multiple outlets about the same news event the audience can draw their own conclusions rather than just believe what one news story from a single outlet has told them.

In many ways the audience has gained some controls over what is being fed to them, what I wonder now is what the danger of that control really is.

I started to consider the world we live in today. News media is a primary resource for getting information about events that haven't quite been cataloged in our history books yet. It is our way of knowing what is going on around the world. I would also argue that the news media, by its very nature is tragically flawed. There is no hope of true neutrality in news media as it stands right now. The way our news is curated via omission prevents news media as a whole from every being truly non-bias. I wondered what it might take to create a neutral news media...

Imagine a world where cameras and microphones are everywhere, every angle is watched and listened to. In that world there is a massive database of faces and voices cataloged for easy reference. Now imagine that there are no reporters, what these cameras and microphones are capturing is the news. The system that these cameras hook into would run checks with the databases of people for an accurate account of who was there, the system would understand what was said. The system would then edit this information into a comprehensive news cast that would be available for all of the world's citizens to view.

When the news media is void of human editing does the news then become neutral? How does the addition of technology into the sphere of news media effect the neutrality of our news?