[Infowarrior] - LA Times hysteria on Google News, UBL, and 'unedited' responses

[Richard Forno]

Two salient points from this LA Times editorial about Google News are just
too funny to ignore.......

Source: 
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-google17aug17,0,5712024.column?col
l=la-opinion-leftrail

> Many publishers consider the Internet, and Google in particular, a greater
> threat to their livelihoods than Osama bin Laden.

Always good fear tactic to invoke UBL in the first sentence of an editorial
rant.  It's right up there with waving the flag and asking about who's
protecting the children.  Smaks of ignorant desperation, methinks.

> But Google now is doing yet another thing that's bound to get under
> journalists' skin. This month, it announced plans to let people and
> organizations comment on the stories written about them. For example, if The
> Times ran another exposé on conflicts of interest within the Food and Drug
> Administration's drug-approval process, Google News would provide a forum for
> the FDA and any researchers or drug manufacturers implicated in the story to
> respond, unedited.

How dare Google let the public or the subject of a news story publish a
response that is UNEDITED by the journalism community on a site called
"news"?  My stars, that would be the thin edge of the wedge and the end of
civilization as we know it!  (Granted, there's the potential for lots of
'noise' in such unedited forums, but It's not like folks could publish their
own responses on blogs and/or via press releases already, right?)

You have to wonder if the ailing print news industry is shooting itself in
both feet using such histrionics and self-serving fearmongering ala the
entertainment industry.

-rf