Now, I'm all for blogging - blogging is a realm where opinions can be shared and issues can be discussed. But blogs are NOT disguised as news, and those literate enough to understand the blogs usually know the difference between someone's opinion and credible fact. Sometimes. But this iReport thing could actually look like legitimate news to someone. Say someone searches Barack Obama. They might stumble upon this video of Obama blowing his nose. I searched Barack Obama and also recieved links to a bunch of pictures of paintings with political dialogue, Hilary vs. Obama cartoons and articles, and other opinion pieces. Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. What bothers me is that it's labeled as "news." People are short on credible sources for news anyway. I feel like this just adds more to the mess of public discourse that is the news. Can't we just have blogs and news, without all this weird stuff in between?
Monday, March 3, 2008
iReport takes blogging to the next level
This morning while browsing the internet, I stumbled upon this interesting little section of CNN's website. Apparently CNN has the bright idea of implementing this iReport, an area where news can be generated by absolutely anyone. These reports posted include pictures, videos, and user-created news reports, none of which are fact-checked or are required to come from any sort of credible source.
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What is interesting to me about this new venture by CNN is how well disguised its real agenda is. I think that the main intent of this website is to use it as a tool to find out what CNN viewers want to see on CNN. It also gives them an outlet for more online advertising to generate more revenue. If they choose to utilize this, we'll have to wait and see. There is also the slim chance that some nobody might provide a scoop on some small bit of news from somewhere around the country that they can turn around and take credit for. I think the best summary for this website is in the order of its title: iReport: Unedited. Unfiltered. News.
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