The Old Media Algorithm

(In response to an opinion piece on the NY Times: The Google Algorithm).

Old media reaches over 90% of the world’s population. Analysts reckon that most people still rely on old media for half of their daily news intake. When journalist, editors, or presenters tweak (skew) their supersecret algorithm, as they do hundreds of times a week – they can out a gay member of parliament or help elect a country’s first black, female president.

When there was competition in old media, it was easy to be agnostic about news, with no reason to play favourite with one candidate over another. But as old media has become more concentrated, with fewer competitors owning newspapers, radio and TV stations in the same market, it has acquired pecuniary incentives to favour one party over another.

Old media argues that it’s only the messenger and it does not bias the message. With declining circulation and the people spending less time spent in front of the tube, their grip on serving news the way they want to is waning. Competitors are a click away and old media is concerned that the premonitions of the new media gurus are finally coming true. The situation has become so dire that a case is now building for government handouts to help ensure that yesterday’s old media remain the gatekeepers of tomorrow’s news.

In the past few months, the old media rallying cry has intensified. Traditional journalism, they claim is under siege by bloggers and copy cats like the Huffington Post. They argue, “how can the people rely on the trustworthiness of today’s online news if they (the old oligarchs) are not serving it.” Rivals in new media have accused old media of sour grapes, especially now that their grip is slipping and they are no longer able to control the message even with their insanely high concentration of media ownership. Old media though says it still expects the government to bail them out, especially if said government expects to be re-elected.

Their accusations may or may not have merit. Old media says there is no bias. They only report what their people want to see or hear. Some old media pundits refuse to change and continue to claim that sites such as Mahalo are nothing more than a collection of links with next to no original content of their own, precisely the kind of information the people should be protected from. Antitrust regulators in the United States could well let old media buy 100% of all media assets in multiple markets because they are no longer as relevant as they once claimed to be.

Still, the potential impact of old media’s bias on news is such that it is still worth preventing further concentration of ownership to ensure ‘the editorial algorithm of news’ is free from a single entity’s faltering grip over all media (especially in Australia).

Some early suggestions for how to accomplish this include putting old media out of their misery with some specified level of accountability in their editorial policy that guides its bias. Another would be to ignore their whinging all together as their dominance is truly coming to an end.

Old media still provides an incredibly valuable service, and the government must be careful not to rely on social media to spread its message to the masses, at least not yet. Remembering that old media can still help fill party coffers, paying gazillions in old media buys to help sway public opinion is a small price to pay (by taxpayers), so government must tread lightly and protect its investment in the old guard.

With these caveats in mind, if old media continues to see itself as the map to the daily news, it concerns us all that it delivers the message to us without tweaking the news algorithm.

The satirical views expressed in this article are the sole views of the writer.

Further reading: