- . Digg It
- . Sphere It
- . E-mail This
- . Save to del.icio.us
- . Permanent Link
Google Is the New God
But the website's new commenting plan won't work
We've come a long way from the days when the CBS Evening News was known as "the voice of God." Television newscasts and big-city dailies no longer presume to speak with that authority, partly because they cultivate the kind of casualness they think will appeal to a younger demographic and partly because their status simply isn't the same now that the Internet gives everyone access to the same audience. From bloggers to "citizen journalists," we can now hear from an entire pantheon.
To stretch a metaphor, the power now belongs to the High Priests — the staff of Google — whose algorithm determines which stories come up when a user searches for a particular event. (The fact that they labor in a place called the Googleplex gives them an appropriate remove from worldly concerns.) But the influence they wield sometimes makes me yearn for media monotheism.
Google just announced — on its own blog, of course — that it plans to experiment with letting the subjects of news stories comment on them. This is both revolutionary and profoundly democratic: Who better to keep watch over the media than the people and organizations reporters write about? What better time to do this than now, when the trust in that media seems to have hit an all-time low?
Yet to me this seems like a terrible idea. Agreed, mainstream news organizations are flawed, and they always have been: What seemed like the voice of God really came from a man behind a curtain. And it's important for other journalists — professionals, bloggers, anyone — to watch the watchmen. But the purpose of journalism has always been to evaluate the conflicting claims of different entities involved in a particular event and synthesize them into truth, or at least the truth as seen from a particular point of view. It's an imperfect system, run by flawed people, and mistakes happen. But Google will give people and organizations more power to get their points across without evaluating them at all. I'm all in favor of giving voice to the voiceless. But this system will also be used by companies that already mount expensive PR campaigns to get their message out.
To stretch a metaphor, the power now belongs to the High Priests — the staff of Google — whose algorithm determines which stories come up when a user searches for a particular event. (The fact that they labor in a place called the Googleplex gives them an appropriate remove from worldly concerns.) But the influence they wield sometimes makes me yearn for media monotheism.
Google just announced — on its own blog, of course — that it plans to experiment with letting the subjects of news stories comment on them. This is both revolutionary and profoundly democratic: Who better to keep watch over the media than the people and organizations reporters write about? What better time to do this than now, when the trust in that media seems to have hit an all-time low?
Yet to me this seems like a terrible idea. Agreed, mainstream news organizations are flawed, and they always have been: What seemed like the voice of God really came from a man behind a curtain. And it's important for other journalists — professionals, bloggers, anyone — to watch the watchmen. But the purpose of journalism has always been to evaluate the conflicting claims of different entities involved in a particular event and synthesize them into truth, or at least the truth as seen from a particular point of view. It's an imperfect system, run by flawed people, and mistakes happen. But Google will give people and organizations more power to get their points across without evaluating them at all. I'm all in favor of giving voice to the voiceless. But this system will also be used by companies that already mount expensive PR campaigns to get their message out.
What People Are Saying…
Leave a Comment