Today's Daily podcast was about the terrorist attack in New Zealand. First they had interviews with victims, then quoted the prime minister about gun control and they ended with a broad trashing of the net, specifically YouTube and Facebook. But they omit a very salient fact about the economics of running an open content publishing platform. You can't review each video in advance, there are too many videos and employees are too expensive. There are shades of gray, but for the NYT it's black and white. Further the reporters have a huge undisclosed conflict of interest, because the net is used for more than terrorism, it's sources going direct to interested readers. There's a new news system trying to boot up. The same features of the net that make it possible to bootstrap a terrorism network, also enable new channels of news. But of course this is never part of their discussion. They make it sound easy. Tech is bad. Tech is responsible. Implied but not said: shut it down. They are as scary as the terrorists. Think about it.
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