Wednesday, November 19. 2003
Think Big Media Isn't Trying to Influence You?
Media giants have an agenda. This has been pretty well documented. Watch Fox, MSNBC, CNN, listed to Clear Channel and then watch PBS and NPR, and search the web. You'll see clear differences in the information presented as "facts".
But sometimes it's more subtle than that. I pretty much use Google as my search engine of choice, because they have made it very clear how they rank sites and refuse to silently rank sites for pay (advertisements on Google are obvious. Sites are ranked not according to hits, but according to links to those sites).
I just ran across an article on Groklaw that points out an interesting effect that MSN's human intervention into page ranking has caused. Very subtle, very insidious.
And yes, Microsoft counts as Big Media. They're one of the world's largest content providers.
But sometimes it's more subtle than that. I pretty much use Google as my search engine of choice, because they have made it very clear how they rank sites and refuse to silently rank sites for pay (advertisements on Google are obvious. Sites are ranked not according to hits, but according to links to those sites). I just ran across an article on Groklaw that points out an interesting effect that MSN's human intervention into page ranking has caused. Very subtle, very insidious. And yes, Microsoft counts as Big Media. They're one of the world's largest content providers.
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