I wrote the following article for a different website but I thought I’d share it here as well. I’ve edited it slightly from its original version, but the content and message are still the same. I’m curious to read what other people think about this topic.

#     #     #

There are days that my mind is so bombarded by facts, images, and ideas that I fear my head will explode, just like in the movie “Scanners”! I’m overloaded with tons of useless information every day: radio, TV, internet, newspapers, magazines, E-Mail, you name it: I’m constantly being bombarded by bits and bytes that I can’t even begin to process if I try to absorb all of them. Meanwhile, I’m multi-tasking, which means that I’m not paying close attention to many things. Is it any wonder that I’m going to misinterpret information because of all of these distractions? Am I really going to pay close attention to every single piece of information that flies past my eyes? And does this give unscrupulous media practitioners the ability to make deceptive or false information stick in my mind?

Bearing these questions in mind, here are some of my concerns about the reliability of information supplied by the mass media:

BIAS, SPINNING, AND SHAPING OPINION

Bias is a term used to describe a preference, whether overt or covert, that influences how we see the world and how we describe it to other people. Bias in US media is typically described as liberal or conservative and each side claims the other is reporting information according to their bias. On one side you have “fair and balanced” Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Bernard Goldberg (the author of “Bias”), while in the other corner you might have CNN, Air America (now defunct?), and certain stereotypical “liberal”media. Eric Alterman’s book “What Liberal Media” argues strongly, and somewhat convincingly, that the so-called liberal bias in well-known news sources is exaggerated. Moreover, he indicates that there is more of a conservative, or corporate, bias in the media because, put simply, big business pays the bills.
I personally believe that the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes because any special interest, once it has enough resources and power, will use the media to promote their preferred messages for good or evil. Government, in its somewhat unholy partnerships with big business, will also use the news media to broadcast its preferred messages. My own experience in business and politics, although limited, leads me to believe that the phrase “the ends justifies the means” is alive and well and the facts are one of the casualties of the spin wars. Facts, to paraphrase a popular documentary, become an inconvenient truth to be eradicated or ignored in the pursuit of the agenda.

MASS-PRODUCTION, LOW QUALITY

If you do enough exploring and investigation, you’ll notice something interesting about the mass media. Despite the thousands of media broadcasters or outlets, the vast majority of them tend to rely on the same few sources. This includes sources like the Associated Press, the Canadian Press, Reuters, and other agencies that specialize in somewhat bland, but timely, news feeds. If you’re really careful, you might notice another thing: major media outlets will cross-quote and cite each other as references. This is especially true within a “family” of newspapers owned by a single controlling interest, whereby centralized news gathering is distributed to and through regional news outlets.

What should we make of this? I’d say that a lot of the news we see today is essentially a limited series of stories which, while not necessarily false, are heavily reliant on common sources. This makes great business sense for big media, who can cut reporting costs while maintaining output. However, if the central sources make mistakes, then inaccurate information will quickly spread throughout the media. The unfortunate thing is that the first message about a topic that a person hears tends to be the message that “sticks” in the consumer’s brain, making inaccurate or lazy reporting very damaging.

WHAT’S A CONSCIENTIOUS NEWS CONSUMER TO DO?

Oddly enough, the best solution that I can come up with to make informed decisions about the news and media that we are exposed to comes from the brainchildren of the corporate world: the MBAs. MBAs have to become experts at researching and absorbing massive amounts of data, just like other graduate-level students. However, MBAs are encouraged to work collaboratively. So, what’s an MBA going to do to cope with information overload?
I can describe the answer using two words: study group. MBAs typically join study groups during the course of their degree programs. These groups exploit a key business concept: division of labor. The members of the study group will pick areas of knowledge to specialize in. These experts will provide “study notes” and other relevant knowledge to their team members. It’s a simple yet powerful concept that has application can be used within many domains.
My recommendation for those people who want reliable information is to follow the MBAs lead. In fact, social bookmarking is an innovative means of providing this type of shared knowledge pool. The concept can be applied as generally or specifically as desired.
Let’s take information technology, as an example. You can divide it up into various categories: hardware, software, communications, design, and so on. Each of these categories can be broken down to various topics. If you want to keep abreast of information technology news, you would develop a network of contacts that specialize in specific areas of interest. Each “expert” or specialist would be responsible for researching their area thoroughly to find accurate, reliable, and complete information. The specialist would then be responsible for flagging reliable information and making it available to the study group.
Social bookmarking provides powerful new ways to both collaborate with individuals while creating a body of trusted knowledge. The key to getting access to accurate knowledge is to build a reliable network and maintain it. Somehow, without being oppressive, peer review and auditing are required to ensure that data is accurate. These processes have been used in the academic community for years and are an underlying assumption in Web 2.0 applications. The opportunity is there for the taking.

CONCLUSION

The ideas in this article are not new or groundbreaking. However, with the perceptions of media bias and, worse still, reports of tampering within the new collaborative applications like Wikipedia, the need for accurate and reliable information is obvious. I’m just adding another voice to the chorus of people who recognize the problems. I believe we have the tools and we need to use them. We all stand to lose or gain from this need for good, reliable information.