Youtube news is a straightforward media project with an extremely limited scope: to be the ‘snopes of youtube’.
Mission statement: Youtube News is unsympathetic to the “post-truth era” sentiment. For a “post-truth” society to exist it necessarily entails that there was once, or even a couple of times, a “truth-era”. This conception is patently false. Similar analogies can be made along the lines that we now live in a “corrupt” society, that now - more so than ever in the history of mankind — justice and authority are being exploited to the n-th degree. Post-truth is a concept that hardly bears scrutiny.
Specifically in terms of journalism: there has never been a stage or time when the dissemination of information has not significantly been abused, altered or skirted. From day one of the establishment of the Gutenberg press — media “for the people” — yellow journalism, tabloids and propaganda have always been at the forefront. The reason we have media ethics in the first place is because in the wrong hands use of media will always abused... for the simple fact that there will always be 'wrong hands'!
However: youtube news does subscribe to the idea that truth and context are under threat in ways never seen before. Specifically with such an overabundance of information and information sources ‘echo-chambers’ can reasonably be called a cultural-technological virus: once it takes hold, of any individual, group or ideology it is incredibly hard to cure. A good example of this can be seen in the sudden disappearance in the distinction between a 'news article' and an 'opinion article'. Opinion pieces have a legitimate and important role in even the most 'newsy' of news media, yet it does seem that most outlets no longer -- and quite ironically! -- make or support such a distinction.
On that note the purposes of youtube news should become more clear. In a hyperlink and video editing world, especially in the context of new media demands that lead to quickly written and incomprehensive articles, hyperlinks oftentimes replace substantive points or evidence. Hyperlinks are often either inappropriately used or irrelevant to the point at hand. When any article has an overabundance of hyperlinks with leading phrases, any reader is likely to equivocate the hyperlink as evidence of the claim — often times without clicking it themselves. "Pewdie says he isn't a nazi but see here, here and here."
Furthermore, and now in the context of the video, journalists can either cherry pick soundbites in their writing or compile edits of videos that clearly don’t represent best practices of the journalistic ideal. In the past, even instances of outright hit pieces were limited to some form of legitimate representation since the journalist in question had to do their best to get some substantive commentary from their target. And, pratically speaking, it was therefore pretty difficult to do so without interviewing the subject in question. It just couldn't be avoided.
More troubling to our current culture and journalistic practices, often times journalists don’t even attach the video itself — and if they do they purposefully choose more lengthy videos — so that their misleading sourcing of quotes and information cannot be properly scrutinized unless the reader sets aside the time to watch the video themselves. In fact, even more despairingly, journalists also may represent the viewpoints of the individual or institution in question only from the video: without actually reaching out to verify accuracy. It’s convenient. If they make clear that the information is only from the video — they are not as, but still are somewhat, blameworthy. But of course, they may also — through sloppy work or devious practices — not make it clear that this information is not a primary source.
Finally: since youtubers -- even creators such as Pewdiepie with a strong infrastructure and audience -- correct the record primarily in a video format and on youtube, those who even generally browse the platform and find it appealing have a bias towards more towards 'traditional' news sources in the form of articles and thought pieces. Again, this largely has a lot to do with the massive output and brevity of articles versus video, and is always more likely to reach more people than even the most popular YouTube channel or video.
Hence, youtube news.
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