News, Opinion and Efficiency

Jeff Jarvis writes up some thoughts spring boarding from Nick Denton's post regarding the news/opinion divide. At the highest level, this is about the value of humanizing information. There are two related points that I think are missing from this discussion. The first is the value a source of information provides to the user by enabling them to be efficient consumers of that information. The second is a little more complex, and is to do with network effects and homophily.

Efficiency: news sources, or rather, news aggregators, must make decisions about which pieces of news to present to the consumer. In addition, they must figure out how to present this news. Objectivity and the editorial role play in to this by removing distractions and providing a relevance function to the possible set of news items. Opinion - that is to say - removing either or both of these filters - may well lead to a lack of efficiency on the side of the consumer.

Homophily: consumers, being human, are subject to homophily. Thus, the more human/emotional an information source is, the more it will strengthen reading behaviours that are driven by this seeking of like minded writers. With ideal information distribution goals in mind (allowing information consumers to be more efficient and better informed) this will do a disservice to readers.

I think the bigger picture here is to do with trust. If we could trust our news sources, then objectivity and editorial control would be fine. However, the forces that determine what a news source reports work directly against trust as they are financial. Bringing in the emotional element - the personality of the writer - into the picture provides a powerful connection with the reader, thus replacing trust with a personal relationship.

Comments

[William Cohen]

Neither Jeff Jarvis or Nick Denton discuss another stogy old-fashioned media giant that tries to suppress opinion and present information objectively - Wikipedia. The inability of human reporters to be completely objective doesn't mean that it's not useful to attempt - a concert violinist can't play perfectly in tune either, but that doesn't mean you should give up....