Narrow casting and click desperation are not good for accuracy

Too strongly asserted but a couple interesting ideas or observations. From How the Destruction of Political Journalism Came to Be by Charles J. Glasser.

According to Techcrunch, the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent $81 million on Facebook ads: the Russians spent $46,000. And it’s nearly impossible to determine with accuracy how far that $46,000 moved the needle if at all.

[snip]

If “what’s trending?” now determines or heavily influences the front page of influential media, then the lack of veracity of “what’s trending” may be responsible for the ever-deepening distrust and dislike the public has exhibited towards legacy media. (I’m not convinced that the President’s bloviating “enemy of the people” language helps, but innumerable self-inflicted wounds have undoubtedly cost legacy media the important currency of trust upon which it relies).

[snip]

Jaroslovsky blames, to a large extent, the hidden negative impact of “personalization” of news content. “Publishers are looking at the kinds of stories that are read most by their own users and zoom in on and emphasize those hot button issues. In a way, it’s narrowcasting — appealing to one group — as opposed to broadcasting to reach the widest audience.”

Jaroslovsky explains that “If you go into the data, and look at the polarization, it’s not much different than what’s been happening before. What’s different is the deeper anger and even hatred.” The feedback loop increases “a more overtly ideological trend,” he says, noting that time-honored principles of responsible journalism have fallen by the wayside: “One example in the race to capture clicks is publishers using loaded terms more than ever, telling readers what the reporter thinks instead of showing readers what happened.”

As to the vitriol, Jaroslovsky suggests that “the proliferation of outlets, from cable to internet, makes it harder to get noticed, to cut through the static. Now, the way to success seems to be: yell the loudest to dominate the cycle by being outrageous. The level of disdain may be a result of the feedback loop and the megaphone effect of the internet.”

Indeed, we are paying the price for the democratization of speech in a world where everybody is Gutenberg. In my view, when you do the utilitarian math, I’m not so sure that’s always a bad thing: if the “topic of the day” is partially guided by informed readers instead of solely by an elite group of paternalistic BosNyWash Corridor habitués, isn’t the likely result a wider spread of topics and viewpoints?