The heads of two of the worlds largest news outlets, Tom Curley from The Associated Press and Rupert Murdoch from News Corp, each spoke at a conference of 300 media representatives in Beijing this week stating that news portals like Google have earned fortunes from their articles and media without offering fair compensation to those creating the content.In his speech, Curley told the conference that "crowd-sourcing web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing websites of traditional news publishers. We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content".
Curley also told the room that it's time news creators no longer tolerate the disconnect between themselves and those businesses who "profit from it without supporting it".
Murdoch took the argument one step further by saying that content producers will be demanding to be paid. Murdoch continued, "The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators...who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph".
While these statements might be signaling a sign of things to come, Newsweek journalist Weston Kosova thinks Curley and Murdoch are all bark, no bite. Kosova reports that in the case of Google News, searchers are presented with headlines and brief summaries, together with a link to the full article at the source news website; no hosting of external news articles takes place within Google itself.
Kosova believes Murdoch and Curley know how Google News works and suggests that both can delink their sites from Google's search engine quite simply. But in doing so, their news would no longer show up in Google searches.
In one final dig at the two media moguls, Kosova argues that in delinking their media from Google, "...they know that their traffic would dry up overnight. They'd rather blame someone else for their failure to compete in a changing market place..." and suggests that Murdoch and Curley, "...go right ahead...Stop the thievery. Pull the plug on Google right now. I double-dog dare you."
What this means for consumers accessing online news content, time will tell.
No one wants your crappy tabloid grade content anyway, so PLEASE pull it and end your media empire in one fell stroke.
Sincerely,
Sane Citizens of the World
It's also insulting to the consumers' intelligence.
Insane Citizens of the World
Your welcome.
I prefer Fox, Drudge, Breitbat to the left leaning Msnbc, abc, cbs, nbc, cnn's of the world who are nothing more than liberals. Journalism is 80+ % liberal,
ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN POLL, so, if Fox & a few others are more right
leaning, what's the problem. No one if FORCING you to watch or read.
Let the market figure it out. Oh wait...it already has, LOL, your "sacred"
"mainstream" media sources are dying on the vine.
so, if Fox & a few others are more right
leaning, what's the problem.
The problem is when Fox News LIES. I watched it the other day when O'Reilly had Michael Moore on to talk about health care. Fox tried to discredit Moore by showing footage of an abandoned hospital in Cuba spliced together with footage of patients from a completely different hospital. It was so badly done that Moore laughed at them, and O'Reilly had nothing to say.
That is just one recent example of LIES that Fox News spreads. They aren't opinions, they're LIES. They're PROPAGANDA and DISINFORMATION.
I am not biased. I can cite numerous examples of CNN's LIES as well. The most blatant perhaps being the Russia-Georgia war of last summer, when CNN depicted footage of the Georgian shelling of South Ossetia as Russians shelling Georgians. Even when the footage was disproved, CNN continued to claim the Russians attacked first.
You know what the real problem is? They're all corporate-owned, for-profit, advertizing-sponsored companies. Their news is written to make $$$, not to tell the truth. It's more complicated than that, I'll leave it up to you to figure the rest out for yourself.
That's what I love about the self absorbed far left, they can't even tell the difference between news and opinion pieces so they just go and tar everything with the same brush without knowing what they're really talking about.
It's like saying CBS always LIES as proven by Dan Rather so you can't trust anything CBS says. Or saying that you can't trust anything CNN says because it selectively picks and chooses it's stories and is biased to liberals.
O'Reilly isn't news, he's opinion. Same with Hannity.
No one wants your crappy tabloid grade content anyway, so PLEASE pull it and end your media empire in one fell stroke.
Sincerely,
Sane Citizens of the World
In a mad world, only the mad are sane. :/
The analyses that label Fox News more balanced are only looking at the actual news pieces. The problem is, it's not comparing evenly. Something like 20% or less of the average day will contain 'news' pieces on Fox, while on other networks significantly more time is allotted for actual news. The rest of the time, Fox News is variety or op-ed style entertainment. That's an enormous portion of the broadcast day, and it's significantly right-leaning. It also doesn't have to live up to any standard of journalistic integrity, because opinion is just that.
So please stop saying Fox News is somehow a beacon of sanity in the news industry. It isn't. It's an example of twisting numbers and statistics to market itself, encouraging paranoia among its viewers and suspicion of all other news sources. It doesn't simply compete with other networks--it encourages its viewers to see them as enemies of freedom itself. A special kind of insanity is required to see the press as enemies of freedom. As far as the Bill of Rights goes, it's given equal value with speech and religion.
Fox News devotees need to stop believing they're somehow exposing themselves to more accurate reporting and being good Americans. If you actually want quality information regarding what's happening in the world today, turn off your freakin' television. The internet, to the savvy user, is so much better for news than anything on air, regardless of network. If you care that much about fair, minimally-slanted reporting, stop turning to 'personalities'. They aren't reporting news. They're selling it to you.
I mean, good lord, if Fox News was so bloody patriotic and worried about the American people, they would've stopped being cable-only by now.
Reading the above comments, I tend to think so too. I mean for ****'s sakes, we were merely evaluating the reputation of its news station... but it just has to get political, huh?
It's like saying CBS always LIES as proven by Dan Rather so you can't trust anything CBS says. Or saying that you can't trust anything CNN says because it selectively picks and chooses it's stories and is biased to liberals.
O'Reilly isn't news, he's opinion. Same with Hannity.
There are a noticeable difference between:
a) a opinion : "The president XXX is a idiot" is just a opinion that can be invalid for most people.
b) a mistake :"John Doe die in a car accident" is a mistake if John Doe is still alive or if the defunct have another name.
c) a scam :to photoshop a story or to take a unrelated video and to associate it with a news, also to interview false witness/experts
d) tendentious :to say virally that some hypothesis or even a fact is a lie, example Global Warming and to associate with a hysteria.
And that would be directly relevant to the point I made...how exactly?
The non-internet news areas are still huge and even on the internet Google aren't near to being the single source of news.
If they do walk that way places like bbc will get big rise i imagine. bbc world news is great either way
they are complaining that google is ripping them off, but a quick look at foxnews robots.txt shows them pointing google in the right direction to the content
http://www.foxnews.com/robots.txt
they are complaining that google is ripping them off, but a quick look at foxnews robots.txt shows them pointing google in the right direction to the content
http://www.foxnews.com/robots.txt
"Here, have some of our content. Now pay up!"
they are complaining that google is ripping them off, but a quick look at foxnews robots.txt shows them pointing google in the right direction to the content
http://www.foxnews.com/robots.txt
In case it gets removed/changed, here is the contents of the file for future reference.
Disallow: /printer_friendly_story
Disallow: /projects/livestream
#
User-agent: gsa-crawler
Allow: /printer_friendly_story
Allow: /google_search_index.xml
Allow: /google_news_index.xml
Allow: /*.xml.gz
#
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_search_index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_news_index.xml
They need to realize people don't or at least shouldn't be doing journalism with monetary intentions. I mean its like do you think anyone in Iran during elections got paid to write their thoughts on situations on twitter to world... nope. And that's exactly what true journalism is and if AP move away from that well it'll be just a nail in their casket and journalists because of the greed of higher ups wishing to line their pockets more so they can go buy a ferrari.
There is a very big difference between someone who writes some immediate thoughts and observations versus someone who chases around high-profile figures for interviews, looks into history, and really pieces a story together. The former is arguably much more prevalent than the latter, but they both play a critical role.
I read the news regularly and I'm not surprised to hear that some people think of news sites as being similar to blogs. Between spelling/grammatical errors and overall poor writing on official news sites (which seems to be on the rise, but perhaps that's just my imagination), it isn't uncommon to find blogs that write up news stories in a more professional-seeming manner. It also seems that some news sites are increasingly trying to add in user-created content, making them even less distinguishable.
I don't know what the solution for the news companies is, but asking for payment isn't likely to be it.
There is a very big difference between someone who writes some immediate thoughts and observations versus someone who chases around high-profile figures for interviews, looks into history, and really pieces a story together. The former is arguably much more prevalent than the latter, but they both play a critical role.
I read the news regularly and I'm not surprised to hear that some people think of news sites as being similar to blogs. Between spelling/grammatical errors and overall poor writing on official news sites (which seems to be on the rise, but perhaps that's just my imagination), it isn't uncommon to find blogs that write up news stories in a more professional-seeming manner. It also seems that some news sites are increasingly trying to add in user-created content, making them even less distinguishable.
I don't know what the solution for the news companies is, but asking for payment isn't likely to be it.
My point really in general even with digital distribution on the rise and technology evolving people majority still don't pay for digital media let alone are they going to pay for access to news(it could be argued people who subscribed to news papers do but generally they are ones outside digital evolution). It is in no way going to work if they put the charge on end users or aggregating services like google. They should get enough to pay journalists and cover services from advertising.
I could list many such as coal which are pretty well history in the UK, but were once massively profitable.
I look forward to the demise of Murdoch and all the other tabloid barons as the internet gradually replaces their daily waste of paper.
Very true, which is why they're trying to build industry consensus on new pricing. Since they could each do it on their own, neither boss or company needs anyone's permission, now do they? ;-)
That's what been greedy make you do, $4 billions is nothing for the guy, he wants more.
*IF* they could have, they already would have. ;-)
Same with news sites/companies like MSNBC, or NBC etc that you neglected to mention, or the AP, which provides content for all of them.
The AP & News Corp, & indeed the entire print-based news industry, has to either figure out how to continue making money, or go the way of GM -- an alternative reportedly being explored for/by several newspapers in the US. So they do their little dance in Beijing, obviously hoping to build industry-wide support for a new pricing model... one that would have everybody who counted in the news biz start charging the likes of Google, which after all could most certainly afford to pay a few bucks.
Just like with labor unions, it may or may not be fair, & the asking price may or may not be justified, but if that's the only choice it most likely will be paid. That's where Kosova, with his poly sci background, misses the boat entirely. Neither the AP's Curley or News Corp.'s Murdoch are novices prone to rant purely for ranting's sake. If they wanted to cut anyone off, they'd just do it, no apologies needed. But a new pricing model [some will call it price-fixing] needs most all content providers on board if it's going to take hold -- again look at the labor unions & their efforts to make sure no one can hire anyone else during a strike.
If Curley & Murdoch are ultimately successful in their quest, no one will notice much of any difference, as they're likely not foolish enough to do much more than pick the change out of Google's pockets, which are rather full. Kosova will still be working for the "...big ailing news organization..." called Newsweek, writing blogs among other things that he hopes will draw readers to their advert filled site, & so the world goes on, & he can continue cashing his paychecks.
;?P
Google owes NOTHING to them. Unless aggregating headlines and the first 2 sentences of an article counts as plagiarism, google will never owe a dime to these guys. Rupert & Murdoch wouldn't stand a chance in court if they were to sue google for not paying up, but they probably won't since they're hypocrites who are no doubt profiting from headline aggregation sites like google news. Unlike a Labour Union which can have leverage over it's employers and other fellow employees, News Corp and AP have NO leverage at all over google.
Last edited by RPDL on 11 Oct 2009 - 17:03
Google owes NOTHING to them. Unless aggregating headlines and the first 2 sentences of an article counts as plagiarism, google will never owe a dime to these guys. Rupert & Murdoch wouldn't stand a chance in court if they were to sue google for not paying up, but they probably won't since they're hypocrites who are no doubt profiting from headline aggregation sites like google news. Unlike a Labour Union which can have leverage over it's employers and other fellow employees, News Corp and AP have NO leverage at all over google.
You're right. RSS will never be a charged service on any website
Pro wrestling, hip hop, American Idol, and Christianity are popular too. I think that says it all about America. It is a culture that worships stupidity.
yep, and its still the greatest country in the world.
Evolve or die. We are witnessing Darwinism first-hand.
So before you say news is a relic remember that fox news and all other news sites get there news from the AP.
Last edited by Rolando on 14 Oct 2009 - 20:55
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