Random thought for the day: somebody ought to write a book about bookmarks.
Day: May 23, 2006
No on-demand for Brian Williams:
NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams told B&C that he saw a “profound danger” in the impact of “portability and on-demand” technologies and the power they give viewers to insulate themselves from important information.
His reasoning? “Our [journalist’s] job is part civics lesson,” he said. “Much of the news around the world, and the nation for that matter, is bad. Filtering it out of your day does not advance the public good, and it hardly makes us better and more informed citizens of a complicated world.”
Well yes. If you’re using on-demand and portability technologies to filter out bad news and ignore the complexities of the world…
Wait. Isn’t that what media outlets like NBC Nightly News do already?
The value in portability and on-demand technologies is that they will also make more stories, more options, more of the world’s complexities, available. Williams isn’t wrong that there’s the potential for abuse — or maybe, rather, non-use — but it’s a little naive to think of corporate media outlets as stalwart defenders of civic virtue.