An Oasis

The Fourth Estate

It is pretty bad when you even consider that CNN might have turned up the booing for Michael Moore's Oscar speech, regardless of what you think of the views he expressed. I mean, who can we trust for news anymore? I've never been a great fan of CNN, and am thankfully unable to receive the painfully patriotic Fox news. The BBC, despite Andrew Sullivan's comments to the contrary, seems one of the least likely to attract serious criticism while ITV News and Sky News with their human interest focus should collectively be regarded as DDN (Dumbed Down News).

I'm reading a book by John Pilger at the moment and another by Con Coughlin (of the Daily Telegraph) who use the same facts to reach wildly different conclusions authoritatively, leaving me wondering whether you could build an algorithm to analyse news stories and to average out the claims to end up with something plausible or at least believable.

Google News has made it easy for hard core news addicts to inform their opinions by reading widely on a particular story but for those who have neither time or access to a wide variety of sources the mainstream news outlets must be above suspicion.

The idea of regulating the media troubles me, but so too does the masquerading of partiality as News. Is News sacrosanct? Is one persons news another persons nonsense? Maybe I'll sort my thoughts out on this one day and return to it!

Posted by Paul at April 16, 2003 03:17 AM |