The Perils of Democracy Why user-driven news sites are completely incompatible with politics Justin Hartfield
User-driven news sites offer many substantial advantages over traditional editor-based news sites. For one, the duties of the editor are performed by the masses, which means a lower overall operating cost and the added benefit of having your cover page filled with exactly the most popular stories in that precise moment in time. In essence, the site's best content is continually being updated 24/7 - for free.
This format has become increasing popular and lucrative for the sites that employ such a democratic system. Outlets like reddit.com, digg.com, ShoutWire.com, Netscape.com, Care2.com, and spinr.com have seen mushrooming numbers in terms of hits and unique visitors. Its clear that the future of the Internet is Web 2.0.
The system, however, is not without its flaws. With respect to politics, user-driven news sites will never be able to compete with already established legitimate news outlets like CNN(.com) or The Wall Street Journal. The nature of political stories is such that they are often reported in response to a major failure, scandal, or otherwise general ineptitude in Washington, and indeed globally.
Pictured below is a graphic which better illustrates the idea:
These are the ninth, tenth, and eleventh most popular "Political News" stories as of 9/28/2006 at 6:45 PM PST. While these stories are tagged into the "Political News" section, rather than "Political Opinion" section, they are clearly biased. It is not the actual content of the story which being promoted, nor the substance of the article, rather it is the message of the article's title. Not surprisingly, all three article titles attempt to paint President Bush in negative light.
The image above was taken about the same on reddit. Note how the top three stories all contain varying degrees of bias.
Here's care2news top "US Politics" stories. (Please note the PI had a Paper Ballot proposal published on our website before Democrats.com, though incredibly we did not make it to the front page.):
Without an editor rejecting patently bias articles from a source claiming to be non-partisan, users will continue to vote for the stories with the most mass appeal. In the present, it is fashionable to bash the President (in the past it was outing someone as a Communist or Jew). These user-driven websites, operating under the banner of complete democracy, are contributing to the narrowing of its users' perspectives. These websites reject contrasting viewpoints and promote only those which are in line with the masses. Despite their intentions to inform, they are actually forming barriers in the minds of their readers. Anyone who gets the majority of his political news through user-driven news sites is carrying out a disservice to his cognitive abilities.
In order for these sites to be taken seriously by the news makers and the indeed the general public, they must implement some form of high-level editing. Either the editors reject a story with out-and-out partisanship or they include some articles with opposing takes. Even though these sites claim to be 'news aggregators', they offer little in the way of aggregating less popular but nonetheless interesting articles from divergent news outlets.
Discover the Truth for yourself. Oftentimes you'll be shocked to discover what's popular isn't always right, and what's right isn't always popular.
More on the subject of activism: Give Up The value of political apathy and disengagement
