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Google Knol Opens to Public - Wikipedia Competitor Includes Identified Authors, Rankings, Ads
ABC News ^ | July 24, 2008 | Ashley Phillips

Posted on 07/26/2008 10:58:46 AM PDT by Zakeet

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To: adorno; abb; Milhous; PGalt
There should be a Freeper authorship group created this is NOT identified as originating from FR.
I'm working on something like that.

But, it won't be affiliated with the left, or the right, or anywhere in between.

It is intended to be unbiased, and balanced.

The trouble with "objective journalism" is the presumption in the assumption they make that they are unbiased and balanced.

To seriously attempt to be unbiased and balanced, you must first start from the assumption that in fact you are not inherently so, and must discount your own tendency to assume that what you want to be true is true. As Justice Scalia puts it, he tries doubly hard to critique his own logic whenever he finds that he likes the result of that logic.

Another way of putting it is that you need to be philosophical - not claiming to be wise but only that you love wisdom. Because claiming to be wise is what the Sophists did - and you know what "sophistry" has come to mean.

I considered contributing to conservapedia - but quickly came to realize that the very format and required hoops prevented me, as a practical matter, from ever actually accomplishing my objective. I decided that I would simply remain a lowly, anonymous FReeper whose writing would stand or fall on its own internal logic, without any appeal to the authority of the fact check system of the encyclopedia format. I will cite what references I can, but I will not shoehorn my thought process into their format, which I find alien to me.


21 posted on 07/27/2008 8:44:46 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The conceit of journalistic objectivity is profoundly subversive of democratic principle.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
The trouble with "objective journalism" is the presumption in the assumption they make that they are unbiased and balanced.

I completely agree with you on this point and on every other point you made.

But, when I talk about unbiased and balanced, I'm talking about allowing the presentation of all vews along with the news from many different sources. I'm not talking about me or a group led by me presenting the news and the views.

If you examine what I proposed in my previous post, I don't mention my views or news as presented by my idea. I'm talking about allowing the news, and info and views from all sources.



What I have in mind is a way of allowing reporters and columnists to present their news or columns without having to depend on any publisher.

A reporter or columnist is recruited by a media outlet, such as the NY Times or NBC. Those outlets are predictably biased towards the left. And when they recruit, they look for reporters or columnists who represent the same kind of views as the media outlet executives or editors have.

When a heavily read newspaper or news outlet presents their news and views, they are presenting with the understanding that most of those doing the reporting or commenting are doing so with a slanted view. When the NY Times or a Washington Post prints a newspaper, the reports or columns are being written by what we now understand to be about 90% biased reporters from the left.

The mainstream media is between 80 to 90% biased towards left. If there was a means to divorce reporting from outlets that seek that kind of bias, then perhaps the news would be less slanted and reports and columns would not be almost exclusively left leaning.

My idea is to let reporters and columnists survive on their own ideas and their own reports and their own commentaries. When a columnist is automatically given a large audience because the periodical that he is employed by has a large circulation, he will automatically be more quoted than someone who might otherwise have had a larger following but won't because he or she is not employed by a well-known or large organization.

"Unbiased" is not possible as long as people have brains. But people, in he absence of other opinions will be inclined to believe biased opinions unless they are allowed to listen to opposite or differing opinions. By allowing the presentation of different viewpoints and by allowing all opinions, hopefully a balance can be achieved. If people are only exposed to single sided viewpoints, then they begin to believe that that's the way of the world and that those opinions are the only valid ones. Without exposure to other views, those people will just repeat and propagate the slanted news and opinions.

Without the automatic huge audiences that some reporters or columnists enjoy from their large media outlets, perhaps those reporters and columnists would have to seek other careers.

My idea would give the reporters and columnists the same audience. No doubt that the left leaning readers would seek the left leaning reporters and columnists. The same holds true for the right. But, if a reporter or columnist fails to win over a large enough audience, then he or she will have to look for other employment. Only the best will survive. Could a reporter or columnist survive when he has competition which is more widely read and who was also given the same audience?
22 posted on 07/27/2008 9:39:14 AM PDT by adorno
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To: Berosus

:’) I quit going to its forums for other reasons, but occasionally one of the pages turns up in a web search for some topic or other. Wiki-wacky-pedia has been leading on a lot of those search results for a while now, and one (well, I) have to wonder whether Google’s Knol will always be at the top from now on.


23 posted on 07/27/2008 10:03:52 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_________________________Profile updated Friday, May 30, 2008)
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To: Zakeet
The real question is, what businesses hasn't Google gotten into yet? Is a chain of dog grooming stores or magic stores next?
24 posted on 07/27/2008 12:45:08 PM PDT by Babu
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; adorno

Thanks for the ping, c_I_c. Interesesting idea, adorno.

from...Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 126. - Ayn Rand

A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

[Objectivism agrees with Aristotle’s formulation of the Law of Non-Contradiction]


25 posted on 07/27/2008 2:46:13 PM PDT by PGalt
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