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The lack of news are going to destroy democracy everywhere because voters are increasingly getting less and less alternative sources and eventually none. Some n
by Joakal 7y ago
The lack of news are going to destroy democracy everywhere because voters are increasingly getting less and less alternative sources and eventually none. Some new age media possibilities I had been thinking of:
1) Double politicians (or leftover politicians). Most of English speaking world has left over votes with no representative, have politicians elected with leftover votes. These are paid positions with no power. They will keep the elected politicians in check and can do local journalism. Otherwise those politicians who may get up to 50% of the vote, will stop working for those potential voters by going back to their lives.
2) Citizen news. Government allows citizens to post anything on their personal blogs/columns/newspapers. It has the side effect of being historical because, the government will forever host it vs losing information when the company/individual no longer hosts it for whatever reason. Registration is simply getting username/password from local government with ID.
Both of these require that the government recognise that some information is better than nothing and an essential need if there is have democracy. To do otherwise, is to let evil continue under the veil (Corruption, abuse, etc). Those who would be against 'information needs to be free and widely available', you guessed it, evil.
- roenxi 7y agoWe live in the best age that has ever existed for abundant news. Never before have multiple perspectives of current issues been as freely available as they are today. Realistically the major impediment is the old news media. Although they have done admirable work keeping everyone informed they are simply not as able to provide the same quick response time, relevance and breadth of opinion as some combination of twitter/specialist websites/the emerging podcast circuits. Democracy will be fine. If anything, the media is an impediment to democracy making it harder for polities to communicate directly. That was fine in the past when there was no better option; but that has changed.
- Joakal 7y agoNot sure how to explain the lack of journalism being an issue but I would say that there's abundant information, not news. It used to be that a person can only get news from several sources, now with Internet, we find so much more sources! The trouble is that sources are shrinking but we don't notice it due to the abundant information or re-distributors of news. As in, global amount of original sources are shrinking every year (aside from PRs). So, while you're seeing more sources personally, it's actually getting harder to get the fine details and local news all over world because information is so cheap to distribute. My suggestions essentially offer a platform for distribution and paid defacto journalists (politicians).
- roenxi 7y agoMaybe, but also consider that there were very few voices with a platform speaking out. One possibility is that people were more confident of their wrong opinions in the past and now it is obvious when people are fabricating. I'd bet there were great journalists of the past who would simply look like imaginative liars today because we can very easily fact check them. The world is huge, complicated and scary. Any perception that there is a team of people out there understanding it for us is a comforting illusion but ultimately not much more than that. 30 years ago I would probably have struggled to compare media reporting of what a politician said to what a transcript but today that is no trouble at all. This newfound capability has trashed my trust in any political journalist.