Niche and Ideological Media Outlets

The Media

(graphics from Media Streams Icon Project, 1994, by Golan Levin with Marc Davis and Brian Williams, found at http://www.flong.com/projects/icons/)

In Generation Ageless, by J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman write:

More than ever before, people have the tools and resources it takes to wrap themselves in a cocoon of news and information that reflects their existing beliefs and preconceptions. People have always done this, but nowadays there is much less content that they share and much more self-sorting into enclosed niches.

As a generation steeped in both political polarization and self-indulgent lifestyles. Boomers will provide a huge market for ever more narrowly bounded news and information niches. (p. 127)

First, be clear on the semantics. With regards to media and information dissemination the word niche refers to a subset. So a media niche is financial news, for instance, and an even more narrow niche would be, for example, New York financial news and even more narrow New York retail news. Niche media is focused on a particular subject and therefore only interesting to a particular audience, however there is no connotation of a specific ideology.

The internet created a long-tail effect regarding distribution of niche media through almost ubiquitous access and propagation of information. Now more people are able to distribute information. However, online distribution of information is not a level playing field. It is compared to other mediums like TV, radio and print; but online information is distributed based on a number of factors and accuracy and insight are not necessarily very influential factors. 

In this article I will address:

• The factors that influence online information distribution.
• What differentiates good journalism from crap journalism.
• The difference between niche media and ideological media.
• The danger of ideological journalism.
• The distribution of ideological journalism.

Online Information Distribution

Information gets distributed online in a number of ways.

1. The highest volume of online information distribution (synonyms: hits, visits, clicks) is done through search engines by a wide margin. Search engines are very mechanical and although there are some fairly sophisticated programs, every single search engine relies on predetermined parameters for bringing the user the results. There is no artificial intelligence that can weed out the inaccurate or least insightful content. Accuracy and insightfulness can be indirectly incorporated in search engine mechanics through popularity of click-throughs. However, a program cannot distinguish if after a user clicks on a pages if they find it insightful or if they think it is baloney. The most important factors in search engine returns are how closely the terms of the search match followed by popularity, both factors following the targeted advertising results of course (sponsored links). A site can climb up to the top of the search engine returns if it can match popular terms and then look interesting enough to click on.

2. The second highest volume of information distribution online is links (and emails) through portals and mass media outlets. Portals are sites that people regularly start surfing on. Portals are a collection of links to various media. Youtube, for example is a video portal. Yahoo! is a multimedia portal. MySpace and FaceBook are multimedia portals with some user-generated content and social networking. The major news outlets (CNN, Fox News, NYTimes, etc) are portals with their own content in a variety of mediums (most often text or video). Portals offer more organized information but users sacrifice diversity of sources. Also, many portals are examples of ideological media. 

3. The third highest volume of information distribution is social networking. In social networking there is a spectrum between closed networks and open networks. A completely closed network only has internal media. An completely open network is the entire internet. MySpace and FaceBook are somewhere near the center. Much of the content distribution going on those sites is from other MySpacers or FaceBookers. There are some newer information tools, like digg or stumbleupon, in which the social network is mostly a tool for distribution of information. 

4. Next is independent site referrals. These are links from other independent sites that you frequent.

5. The lowest volume is direct personal distribution (emails and referrals directly from people you know).

In fact, there is a completely negative correlation between the trustworthiness of the source and the volume of information distributed.

The generalized order of trustworthiness is:

1. People we know personally. (we do not necessarily trust the person, we just have the best idea of how trustworthy they are because we have the most trust information available)
2. Our online social network.
3. Mass media and portals.
4. Random search findings. (we have no information available on trustworthiness, the information could be completely accurate or completely bogus but we have no idea going in because there is no trust information)

Ideological Media

The meaning of ideological that is being used is “a set of beliefs”.

Ideological media is often niche media but not necessarily. Ideological journalism is when a media producer filters the media that they propagate through their ideological belief. It is being selective about what to distribute based on what supports or agrees with a particular ideological goal. Also, choosing to focus on the particular aspects of a story or issue that most support an ideological goal. These practices are called ideological filtering.

There is a spectrum in journalism between complete objectivity and complete subjectivity. Complete objectivity in journalism is all raw facts. Complete subjectivity is fiction. Completely objective journalism is overwhelming, it requires knowing all. There is are too many happening in the universe to be able to be completely objective. If one were to spend their entire day absorbing raw data they would still have take a subjective stand and filter it into a manageable quantity. All journalism is partly objective and partly subjective.

Niche journalism acts as a topical filter. It focuses on a particular topic. 

 

Good Journalism

In The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil they list the guidelines for a journalist to fulfill the duty of providing people with the information they need to be free and self-governing:

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.
3. Its essence is discipline of verification.
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting, and relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Lets go over these. 

1. I’m in complete agreement.
2. I think it should be “loyalty to humanity” meaning without any regards to citizenship.
3. This one addresses methodology. I think it should say “comprehensive verification” meaning all inclusive verification. 
4. Independence means freedom of control or influence of others. This is incredibly important to journalism.
5. This one addresses functionality. Agreed.
6. More functionality. Agreed.
7. This is vague and therefore subjective and I disagree. I think it is the responsibility of the populous to take interest in the significant and relevant. I think a journalist should focus the significant and relevant without making it interesting. For most journalistic media outlets it tends to translate into dramatising the material.
8. Comprehensive I agreed with. Proportional is vague. I assume the connotation of proportional in this case is not favoring any ideological group.
9. I agree but they must have a personal conscience before they can exercise it. I think too many people have lost contact with their conscience and are slackness. 

Good journalism is the key to freedom, tolerance, justice and opportunity. In a society were people and groups have relative freedom, good journalism is the most integral countermeasure against injustice and abuse of power.

The Danger of Ideological Journalism

Ideological journalism reports only part of the truth. The part that most supports their ideology. People who lean towards particular ideologies start to choose one ideological brand of journalism over another. This further polarizes people by providing them with information that is ideologically based. Ideological, systematic thought lessens independent, dynamic thought in society. I am in no way asserting that every ideology is wrong on every belief. No, the point is that individual critical thought is superior and the crux of a free and just society. Ideas, just like people, should be judged on the content of their character, their individual merits. 

 

Ideological Information Distribution

I have been seeing an increasing amount of niche ideological journalism on all mediums. Cable news is especially rife with ideological journalism and bad journalism in general (style of substance). I have also been noticing that distribution of what I defined as good journalism is increasingly difficult to attain online. Unfortunately, it is our own fault. There has been increasing ideological polarization and subscription to group thought over independent thought. In business when there is a void it gets filled and there has been increasing demand for polarized, ideological, niche media. Of course, supply follows demand. 

As mainstream media outlets became more polarized ideological, I have seen an increasing number of citizen journalist become polarized. 

Now we not only have less information on the trustworthiness of our sources (see Online Information Distribution Section) we also have less information contained in each particular story due to ideological filtering. 

Good decisions requires access to accurate, comprehensive information which has been less accurate and less comprehensive over recent years. 

 

Case Study: The Financial Media

It’s sad when you find more truth in fiction than non-fiction, but a lot of so called non-fiction these days is so ideologically bent that it could be considered fiction anyways. It is a spectrum after all. A lot of fiction is “inspired” by the author’s experiences or fantasies, so is a lot of non-fiction for that matter.

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson writes:

…financial journalists had developed into a group of incompetent lackeys who were puffed up with self-importance and who had no record of thinking critically… time after time, without the least objection, so many financial reporters seemed content to regurgitate statements issued by CEOs and stock-market speculators- even if this information was plainly misleading or wrong. These reporters were thus either so naive or gullible that they ought to be packed off to other assignments, or they were people who quite consciously betrayed their journalistic function. (p. 83)

Unfortunately, this is true in real life, here and now. The financial media are some of the worst offenders of not living up to their journalistic responsibilities. Financial journalists seem incredibly slanted towards the investor ideology and almost never seek out the truth. Financial journalism has deteriorated into broadcasting statements and press releases by executives and influential investors and reporting trading prices. There is no effort what so ever to check the titans of finance for abuses of power. The financial media will run with a story a Madoff or Enron or shady hedge fund manager finally gets caught, but they will never question anything before hand.  

CNBC and the Wall Street Journal are particularly useless in practicing good journalism.

 

Conclusion

I’m not a journalist. I’m just a guy with an Econ degree and a strong ideology against ideologies. This is not a news outlet. It is an editorial blog. All this is just my opinions. And still, I practice better journalism in an editorial than 90% of the mainstream media and 99% of the financial media. WTF?

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~ by prfx on December 16, 2008.