Making news great again
Newshub shutting down. TVNZ is putting its newsroom on a crash diet. Calamity for objective and independent journalism we cry. Those evil tech giants stealing eyeballs and advertisers should be brought to account. The Government needs to fund media so we retain some trusted sources. And they should tax the tech titans to pay for their news kleptomania while they’re at it.
Sorry, that horse has bolted. And it’s not in the neighbour’s paddock, it has boarded a plane, flown to Europe (and is being eyed up for dinner by some hungry French farmers whose subsidies do not provide enough for a decent living).
Unfortunately, what is good for us and what we like are not always the same thing. Water and broccoli are good for us. But beer and chips will probably win the most votes in the What do I stuff in my gob? election at grazing time.
The reality we must face, is we are our own worst enemies. The Xinstabooktoks have just created the conditions for us to exercise our weaknesses better. We love to point the finger, but if we’re honest we should only do that if we stand in front of a mirror.
The solution is not restrictions or mandates. They don’t work as people are supremely clever at circumventing things they wish to avoid. Restrictions and mandates are fighting against the flow (which is a powerful torrent when it comes to being told what to!).
The question we need to be asking; is how to design the collation and dissemination of information in a way that works with current behaviours?
There are a couple of challenges. The first one is that people follow their interests. We prefer to be entertained rather than informed at the point of consumption. The outrageous, shocking, hilarious, and unbelievable will always attract more interest than the serious long-form, insightful piece.
Does that mean we have to make more clickbait headlines? Yep. Because we know that works. It appeals to our junk food brain. So let’s throw some sugar or barbeque sauce on that headline. And then write in a manner that makes the story supremely tasty - while still being good for you. That may mean biffing out some conventions on what constitutes ‘proper news reporting’. A bit of hyperbole, clever metaphors, and interesting anecdotes. If that causes increased consumption of the good stuff and a more informed reader, then let’s get our journos into creative writing classes.
The second challenge is trustworthiness - how do we trust what we read? A solution is to create a No Bullshit Score (NBS). This is a score attached to the author of any content on the internet. We get some sensible souls to define what constitutes bullshit (and make these criteria public) then feed this criterion into an AI system that all content-sharing platforms have access to. This clever AI system then rates internet authors based on their posting activity, so everyone gets an NBS score. This score allows people to tell at a glance how trustworthy a source is.
As social acceptance and external validation are powerful motivators of behaviour, you then sign up every celeb and influencer you can find to endorse the benefits of having a high NBS with the goal of making it a social stigma to have a low NBS.
We could lean into the social acceptance thing and create local leaderboards for low NBS scorers so those internet trolls are publicly outed in their communities. And maybe some tarring and feathering sessions for them to cater to our junk news appetite! (AI-generated of course, to avoid the H&S police and having the pesky job of cleaning tar and feathers off the street.)
Then there would be other benefits. Politicians would have an objective measurement for people to assess the level of BS they publish. Good journalists would be easily identified by their high NBS and this could improve their job prospects. PR spin doctors would have their talents exposed (sending them off to creative writing classes so they could become good journos!).
Move over NPS, NBS is coming through…..
