I was happy to see my local cable provider (with whom I have love-hate relationship) (ok, who am I kidding, it’s hate-hate.. I really have very little use for cable television) adding BBC World to its channel lineup. For anyone who hasn’t watched, BBC world is a great way to find out what’s going on beyond the typical North American media filters (Iraq this, Afghanistan that, celebrity shocker of the week etc…). No media source is truly objective, but I would venture that compared to what’s out there, the BBC comes pretty close. More importantly, it offers a perspective that differs from a great deal of what we are typically exposed to, challenging us to decide for ourselves.
TVO’s The Agenda had a great program last night on the role of media (both conventional and new media), with some truly intelligent debate and insightful opinions (thank you TVO!). Above all, the importance of media and journalism to providing democratic checks on government was underscored. While new media has provided an unprecedented level of access to information, there was a concern about whether the economics of the medium will be able to support high-calibre in-depth investigative journalism. The counter to this would be that the economics of conventional broadcast media certainly don’t support this- instead they rely on high production values- but let’s face it, networks aren’t all that concerned with the news anyway. New media, by virtue of its ability to give anyone a voice, provides the ability for the collective audience to put the spotlight on things as they happen, leaving the uncovering of news to those who have the most interest in doing so. The choice of what is important then becomes purely democratic… or at least the theory goes. Another consideration is that things like google news alerts are great in bringing together diverse sources of information on a topic, but while this promotes increased immersion in a particular subject, our exposure to other subjects we might not choose to pursue on our own becomes more limited. Thus the defence of newspapers is mounted by people who just love to get their fingers grimy every morning.
As a side-note, a great site that was mentioned on the show has made my bookmarks toolbar: Daylife presents an innovative way to view news items by combining content from various sources and maximizing the visual potential of the on-line medium.
Posted by David Anders 
