The New News Media Series

Imagine This…

April 14th, 2008 by Rachel

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?