The quest to create a news portal that’s truly neutral has produced some great moments in journalism.  Think Fox News’ Fair and Balanced tagline. It even said that on a tie they gave me to wear back when I did their legal analysis.  It was a pretty nice tie, really.

An email came across the other day promoting another entry into the mix, called Newsy.

Newsy is a news site that uses multiple sources to get across the core of the story. Newsy doesn’t lean to one side over another. They are in the middle kind of like this issue. I think you should consider embedding this video and other videos from Newsy to use on your website because of it’s approach to the newsy

Why the sender of the email would think that her thoughts on what I should consider embedding would matter remains a mystery, but the idea of creating a news broadcast incorporating multiple sources for the purpose of being “in the middle” was intriguing, so I took a look.  Here’s the video linked in the email:



The opening, painting a picture of the overcrowding of a prison cell, was effective, and then it blew up when these words were said:

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave an answer to the $7 billion question: “How can California cap its numbers?”

NOOOO!  The Supremes heard argument.  They gave no answer.  A massive failure for a news story, to offer something so completely and fundamentally wrong. 

As a consumer of news, I welcome credible and intelligent sources of information, recognizing that its often hard to put together a story about something important in the few minutes given to issues of grave consequences between happy dog stories and dead baby interviews.  But when the story starts out with something so basically false, nothing that follows matters.  It has perpetrated a fraud.  It has illuminated nothing.

I’ve never been a fan of the concept of journalistic fairness.  I’ve argued the point with friends in the media, who believe the myth that there are two sides to every story and want to offer each an opportunity to be heard.  Often, there is no other side, and one side is correct while the other is full of malarkey.  To offer equal time, and thereby equal stature, to a nonsensical, false or deceptive position isn’t a point of journalistic integrity, but one of adding to the noise and confusion that renders people incapable of understanding and appreciating the events around them.

The downside to my view is that it requires someone to figure out which side of a story is valid, which invariably is colored by the belief system of the person making the call. 

Aside from the apparent absence of anyone working at Newsy capable of distinguishing between oral argument and a decision from the Supreme Court, its broadcasts tend to cut the money quotes out of news reports by others without the substance.  It reminds me of the fast paced but inherently vapid MTV news reports crafted for those with attention deficits and little concern for facts.  It’s the anti-Sgt. Friday: No facts, Ma’am, just conclusions.

That traditional media sources, like television news, are too far behind the curve and perceived, at least, as too partisan to provide reliable information has become the rule of thumb.  But the nouvelle approaches, such as Newsy, may save some time by putting together an amalgam of multiple sources, but does little to illuminate the issues it addresses.

For example, in a story about indicting Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, the Newsy piece gave time to Andrew Napolitano’s discussion of first amendment issues, but never raised the fact that it exists outside the United States’ jurisdiction, an obvious precursor to prosecution.  One problem is that the media sources from which it draws offer a lack of depth, thus depriving Newsy of any opportunity to offer content that doesn’t exist.  But then, given the model Newsy uses, this will be a perpetual issue, limiting its content to what others have created. If others do a crap job, then Newsy will only have crap to offer.

Ultimately, the promise of offering a more neutral airing of issues, or “middle kind” as it strangely thinks is a more attractive way to put it, still requires Newsy to both start with a sufficient understanding of its subject matter to avoid rebroadcasting flagrantly inaccurate statements, as well as including some substance upon which the viewer can weigh the value of its money quotes.

Will it be good enough that it moves quickly, saves the viewer the time of actually having to watch more in-depth reports and pretends to provide it all in a few minutes?  Not for me, but then I harbor no delusions that my view reflects that of others, for whom fast and easy conclusions without substance will let them rush back to their Gameboy (before all their lives are lost) with the satisfaction of believing that they are now on the cutting edge of information.