Wikipedia founder aims to 'fix the news' with collaborative website
Source: Reuters
The new platform, called Wikitribune, will be free to access and carry no advertising, instead relying on its readers to fund it, while the accuracy of news reports will be easily verifiable as source material will be published, Wales said.
"The news is broken, but we've figured out how to fix it," he said in a promotional video posted on the website's homepage.
The online proliferation of fake news, some of it generated for profit and some for political ends, became a major topic of angst and debate in many developed countries during last year's U.S. presidential election.
Wales argued in his video that because people expected to get news for free on the Internet, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which created strong incentives to generate so-called "clickbait", catchy headlines to attract viewers.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-media-wikitribune-idUSKBN17R11K
The political middle, common sense, Americans, are asserting themselves in
many ways. There is no downside to reality, logic, science, middle-of-the-road
thinking. In fact it's what civilizations rely on.
Girard442
(6,059 posts)It would be nice to have actual news in the news. Of course, if it gets to the stage where it begins to actually work, it will then have to survive intense attacks by the politicians and the existing media.
Ligyron
(7,592 posts)Other than that tho'...
Massacure
(7,497 posts)From the sounds of it, articles will be written by 10 professional journalist as well as a number of volunteers.
singed.dude
(42 posts)We need news that is:
free from money-driven, profit-oriented bias;
not afraid of covering and discussing any issue, whether it's net-neutrality, the fossil fuel industry, climate change, politics, political candidates that don't fit the corporate mold, the pharmaceutical industry, the health care industry, the military-industrial complex, etc.; and
free from fake news.
Have I missed anything?
Dustlawyer
(10,493 posts)JudyM
(29,122 posts)And then we just need to fix the election process/voting equipment, and we'll be a good democracy.
canetoad
(17,088 posts)But are the people who follow fake news even interested in verifying sources?
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)I can hardly wait to check it out. Sounds darn right refreshing!
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,784 posts)many ways. There is no downside to reality, logic, science, middle-of-the-road
thinking. In fact it's what civilizations rely on.
Thanks! However, ... "middle-of-the-road thinking" can be very limiting. It is what reinforces white male privilege and all the old "norms" that strangle any kind of diversity and, dare we say it, deviancy. LGBTQ, muslims, disabled people, visible minorities, victims of sexual harassment & rape, and many groups and sub-groups know this very well.
It can also be limiting to scientific extension. The Schopenhauer quote is a propos:
"All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident."
The Copernican / Galilean theory of the Solar System was ridiculed, opposed and then accepted. Same thing for Darwin's theory of natural selection (evolution) and Mendel's theory of genetics. Gradualism in geology went through the same stages and then Catastrophism made a comeback as applied to special circumstances and it in turn went through the same stages. Even Bill Gates thought for years that 64 KB would be good enough for any personal computer, so much so that he hard-wired it into his operating system and ridiculed people who thought they'd need more. He said that no 9,000 line program like Java was going change the way Microsoft did things and now Java in the form of the Android operating system is deployed in more computers than all Microsoft OS's. Middle of the road thinking even led Thomas Watson of IBM to state in the 1940s that there might be a need for only 5 electronic computers in the whole of the USA.
So, in some areas middle of the road thinking is great (like the consensus on Climate Change). Elsewhere, not so great.
FakeNoose
(32,334 posts)...that the point of view of any publication or news outlet reflects that of the owner who is usually a white male. However it sounds like this project will be run by a committee of 10 professional journalists, who are hopefully going to reflect many different points of view. It seems that they'll be looking for "volunteers" who could possibly be college interns or perhaps people with credentials in the news business.
I'm going to keep an open mind and see what they're trying to do. It does seem like a hopeful start. Maybe it will inspire others to try the same thing.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)because a majority is scornful.
Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Yeah. Reported by "legitimate" news: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0807.html
EXCEPT:
http://fair.org/media-beat-column/30-year-anniversary-tonkin-gulf-lie-launched-vietnam-war/
"By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.
A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media
leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.
The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an unprovoked attack against a U.S. destroyer on routine patrol in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a deliberate attack on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.
The truth was very different."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Or how we had to wait until "The Pentagon Papers" and a trial to learn the truth of our involvement in Vietnam.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pentagon-Papers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Never mind what we'd never have learned if not for the "unnamed source" called "Deep Throat."
tclambert
(11,080 posts)That was about Vietnam, too. I was reminding him that Nixon first used the term "Vietnamization" in 1969 and began reducing the number of US troops there from then on. I cited numerous sources, including two different encyclopedias. He denied it, insisting that the war only ended because Democrats passed a law in 1973 to defund the war. Any evidence, any sources to back that up? No, of course not, just his memory of some propaganda he heard somewhere.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,784 posts)tclambert
(11,080 posts)I hope they can. Yet I recall how at least twice the supporters of Sarah Palin tried to rewrite history in Wikipedia. The first was the article on Sarah Palin herself. They tried to pump up her resume and edit out anything negative. The second time was when she revealed her massive ignorance of Paul Revere's ride, "Shootin' those guns and ringin' those bells." They tried to rewrite the article on Revere to twist it into something almost supportive of her erroneous assertions.
Coventina
(26,844 posts)trolls, paid operatives, state-run programs, etc. subtly manipulating content.
I know this still happens on Wikipedia, as people I know have made edits to articles that have never been caught. (Nothing of import, just little things to tweak their friends and such).
I am not optimistic about open-sourcing the news, no matter how "powerful" Wikipedia claims to be.
Remember the Twitter AI that became racist in a few hours?
not fooled
(5,791 posts)visiting a RW location in Washington (forget whether it was a "think tank" or other office) and seeing a bank of computers staffed by guys who were editing Wikipedia entries. The result: biased search results and entries re-written to favor RW crackpot ideology.
So, yeah, the pukes, kochbots etc. will be all over this trying to catapult the propaganda.
Still, it's a great idea and sorely needed.
Coventina
(26,844 posts)Nitram
(22,663 posts)Sometimes a troll breaks through, but it is a temporary event that is quickly dealt with.
JudyM
(29,122 posts)Nitram
(22,663 posts)...it is Wikipedia. They have done an awesome job providing objective facts on almost everything.
SpicyBoi
(161 posts)Isn't a good thing
jazzcat23
(176 posts)"fix the news?" as in re-write it so it sounds 'smooth', or more realistic? No, won't be putting any faith in this venture. Even though it sounds like some kind of solution, it most likely will migrate into something like "state propaganda" in the end. Like what the Chinese are told, the Koreans, etc. by their "state" leaders. Which is propaganda....
You want true news, go to BBC, we will hear what the rest of the world sees and hears. Until trumps gone, there will be very little actual news coming our of our tv's from corporate media. However, if the money factor is removed, there may be a chance. Do you really think that's going to happen?
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,784 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)tenorly
(2,037 posts)And how do they propose to do that? They're very active, and for the most part have learned how to game Wikipedia.
Lots of alt-right shills too. 'Dalton Castle' is probably the worst.
jayschool2013
(2,309 posts)More aggregation/curation of news doesn't mean more resources for the actual reporters who are on the front lines gathering and producing the original material.
How will this allow the NY Times or the Washington Post to produce original news that Wikitribune can then aggregate/curate and post? I hope part of their reader-funded model includes money to those organizations that are actually reporting and not just aggregating.
karynnj
(59,474 posts)There is already a wealth of primary source material available. Where most people could not easily get a complete transcript of an open government hearing - they are now easily available for anyone to watch. Everything said is then in context.
However -- as many might say -- that is the government speaking in public. We do not know what is said behind closed doors -- though we often get multiple conflicting leaks. Not to mention, what about things that happen in places like Syria. Which accounts there do you give weight to --- RT rarely agrees with the US government -- and Press (Iran's) or the White Helmets have their conflicting accounts as well. Which would Wikitribune publish?
We did all see how completely unbiased they were in 2016! (NOT - in case the sarcasm would be missed)
m.summers
(6 posts)Among 2,000 British adults, 64 per cent trust Wikipedia entries to tell the truth a great deal or a fair amount; compared to 61 per cent for Auntie.
Unfortunately, we now live in the age of the crowd, when we have more faith in what others think collectively than what we are told by the experts. In fact, the crowd is the new expert. And Wikipedias editors or Wikipedians as they call themselves are openly critical and politically committed when you touch special interest groups....
Brother Buzz
(36,212 posts)Often, one can glean a ton of information by examining the 'edits' on a hot-button issue (just looking at the number of recent edits is a huge indicator of a spin game in progress). And to their credit, Wikipedias editors lock the really hot ones, then clean them up with their committee of 'Blue ribbon' contributes who are committed to the truth by systematically differentiating facts from opinions.