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It's both amusing and almost enough to get me to throw myself under a horse van that fake news (the Onion, The Daily Show) seem to have thriving advertiser support, while actual news sources are struggling with revenues. Guess it shows that readers and viewers are more interested these days in making fun of the truth than knowing it.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the aforementioned mock news outlets. It takes both knowledge of the real news and a true creative flair to produce such content. But I'd have thought it would also take knowledge of the real news to appreciate the sarcastic send-up of that news. And that would require patronizing newspapers, magazines and television news, or at least their Web sites. Yet almost all are struggling with advertising revenues, which are supposed to be a product of proven readership and viewership.
But I guess it isn't necessary to actually know what's going on to make fun of it, or to act like you know. Just this morning I editorialized for our paper on the incredible uselessness of some information at Yahoo Answers, where Yahoo members can go to ask questions and receive responses from people who don't necessarily know, well, anything. Like this one, from two years ago (I just stumbled upon it this week) claiming the small weekly paper one county to my west, The Oxford Public Ledger, has been out of business a long time.
When I asked my own question -- that was, how can this be corrected, considering I have about three dozen recent copies of that paper in a stack six feet from my desk -- I was treated like a freak with three heads. I was asked, what does it matter that the information is wrong? I was told that people should know the answers they receive from other yahoos at Yahoo (my term, not theirs) could very well be incorrect. ... Just let it go.
The responses were so dissatisfying that I deleted the question.
One user insulted me, asking how an editor in the newspaper business lacked sufficient understanding of the language to realize that my question in itself was pointless. Why bother correcting information that was never guaranteed to be true?
I felt like Al Pacino in "And Justice for All."
I'm missing the point? ... You're missing the point! ... The whole damned Internet is missing the point!
The point is, when someone asks a question -- anywhere, of anyone, I should think -- they don't just expect an answer, they expect the answer. This one isn't a judgment call; it isn't "Guys? Do you think birthmarks are unattractive?" ... It's a piece of supposedly factual freaking information and it's wrong. Why is there apparently no possible means of correcting or even simply deleting it?
But from the topic of horses, I've wantonly digressed.
I'll try to get back to that more gratifying subject by the end of the night.
