Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Ad Block

Truly effective Ad Blocker software would blank out most financial and technology journalism.

2 comments:

justsomeguy05 said...

Truly effective Ad Blocker software would blank out most "journalism".

Seems to me 90% of all "journalism" is generated by PR people (either for corporations or politicians).

Dale Carrico said...

Well, of course I get your point, there is a lot of crappy journalism out there, media over-reliance on press releases and cultivated sources and stenography without fact-checking lends a promotional cast to much that passes for journalism -- and yet there are such things as investigative journalism and fact-based in-depth reporting and beat journalism that we understand as genres and stumble upon examples of even in the present debased environment. I was trying to imply -- and would still claim -- that the genres of financial and technology journalism are suffused with the norms and forms of marketing in ways that are actually constitutive of the practice, that they substitute for contextualization and fact-checking and criticism practices of neologism and excitement-generation that actual deny relevant contexts, deny relevant facts, and resist critical engagement quite directly in the interest of selling questionable services and consumer goods. Again, I see the force of your observation, and am as irritated by it as you are, of course, but there is always the danger in blanket rejections that you lose sight of best practices and differences that make a difference.