Does anyone else find it odd that TV news is terrible? I realize I’m watching the wrong channels for news, but considering the limited time I spend in front of the TV at all, what news I get is glimpses between entertainment. I was shocked last night to find the news covering a story about ten houses that have pools in their living rooms. I mean, it’s interesting from an entertainment point of view, but from an educational point of view, it’s pointless.

Isn’t the whole idea of TV that the government licenses the frequencies to the stations to ensure that there is some public discourse on the air in addition to the blather? I assume that influence is becoming less prominent as the method of delivery changes. I don’t receive TV over the air anymore, nor do I know of anyone that does. (I’m sure 30 people will now tell me they do.) How can we be sure that the “airwaves” of the future aren’t clogged with tripe like living room swimming pools and American “Idols” over actual news.

What’s even more disturbing to me about this trend toward sensational news - which really isn’t sensational, but more about turning news into entertainment - is that they’re ditching quality, entertaining information for quick soundbites and viral rumors that affect ratings. When I look at information on the internet, which increasingly has associated “up-vote” capabilities, everything that’s really useful is obviously rated so. Look at all of the useful information about the Japanese nuclear power plants and the “danger” from radiation. It’s not coming from TV news. It’s one or two good information sources shared online, up-voted in multiple autonomous community news systems.

During 9/11, the most useful news to me was available online. TV news was good for getting videos of the towers collapsing over and over, but not for much critical analysis or aid on the ground. As it turns out, the internet is good for what it was built for: information resilience during a disaster.

Sure, these social systems are vulnerable to a number of evolving social problems. For example, unless something gets attention, it won’t get up-voted. This has always been a problem with traditional media anyway, and with the internet at least you have the opportunity for people to pay attention to small things. On the other hand, there’s the issue of saturation. Look at how every SEO marketer and his brother dumps lousy sales blogs links onto Digg, which used to be a reasonably decent source (if biased to certain kinds of news) for information. Now, sorting the grain from the chaff is tedious because anyone can toss anything in the hopper.

And like anything, these systems are subject to poisoning. Look at anything having to do with politics. For whatever reason, people with political leanings haven’t figured out that their opinions can be varied on the internet. There’s no need to jump on every cause championed by a party when you’re online. Pick and choose what battles mean something to you, instead! As a result, you get gangs of uninformed sheep all up-voting stuff they don’t really know anything about. Yes, I’m talking about you Jon Stewart people. You watch his show and think you know everything - it’s sad. Thinking about it, I really don’t think that knowing only one person’s side of a topic is better than knowing nothing. Better to be a bit more fully informed.

I’ve had a post in draft for a while now about “baserep”, which is a concept having to do with a person’s reputation lending toward their credibility. This is pretty easy to grasp in concept, but much more difficult to implement in algorithm. If you know anything about how Google determines what pages are best to show in results based on what other people say about those pages, it’s kind of like that idea. And while I think the system is not perfect, it might be the stepping stone from where we are, with “news” almost demanding air quotes, to something more informative and useful.

Or should we just say that TV is no longer useful to enforce as a source of viable news, and merely a source of random entertainment (whether that entertainment is of educational vale or not)? There’s a great way to rejuvenate the newspaper industry, no? Ugh.