Let’s be honest, we can’t take it anymore! Where are ‘Punto Informatico’, where are the specialized newspapers like ‘Hardware Upgrade’, just to name two authoritative technology news outlets that use the Internet for information, increasingly surrounded by unscrupulous sites in search engines?
We now impassively witness the daily birth of websites and little sites made by tinkerers (no longer IT experts, now nearly extinct) who, solely to earn a few dollars through contextual advertising, quickly learn to configure a CMS (a system that allows content publication on the Internet easily and quickly) and copy-paste everywhere thanks to a copy and paste technique taught in the first lessons of the European Computer Driving Licence. To be clear, I am not referring to blogs that have nothing to do with this state of affairs, because a blog is something personal that is born to collect the expressions of its creator, but the web is a true information jungle.
The action of the “kid” next door who, just to buy new Nike shoes or the latest sunglasses, does not open a blog but actually an information site made up of press releases, articles, and a lot of copied content is blameworthy but not justifiable. At the same time, however, it is not acceptable the behavior of sites representing incorporated companies that, according to their articles of incorporation, focus on other matters and certainly not on information, and that enjoy speculating, challenging the “speed of light,” on the poor “information seekers in search engines.” To think that such sites boast labels like “newspapers” or “authoritative sources” but are in no way a news outlet. Does that really seem like a minor difference to you???
After all, to bypass legal obligations and avoid a journalistic director—which is almost always seen as mere dead weight rather than a point of excellence to accredit the outlet itself—it is enough to play on the periodicity of information published on the site, which often, however, is false, since such periodicity can easily be verified by the frequency of updates, which almost always turns out to be daily.
The ones who pay the price, needless to say, are the poor and unaware readers who often rely on algorithms like those of search engines to get informed, assuming that if a news item is published, it is certain to be reliable and verified (a journalist’s duty). This also because those who should oversee the information are distracted by other things…
But, as is known, the fish rots from the head. In this increasingly choppy sea, made up of people and companies without ethical scruples and little attention to the quality of information, the very “sources” themselves enter fully—namely communication agencies that, in order to sell their “press review by the kilo” to their clients, do not disdain inserting press releases even from prestigious clients and very renowned brands into any site, even amateur ones.
Clearly, there are very attentive and scrupulous communication agencies, but many others do not even stop to see if there is an editorial office, if there is a director of the outlet—in short, if their “natural” interlocutor has a name and surname and is duly registered with the professional association, as the law would require. But so it is… It’s like saying: I have to build a house, I turn to a licensed technician, an obvious and indispensable thing. But why is it not just as much so in the world of information, nor is the scruple of those who do communication and information?
Traditional newspapers have always had a good practice: that of dialogue with their readers even when letters traveled at the “speed of a horse-drawn carriage”; today that we have available “very fast” means that allow interacting with the recipient even in real time, I wonder why such means are not used to talk with an editorial office or with those who direct it. The appeal is addressed to communicators but above all to readers who should be considered the only recipients of the editorial product often given to be fed “only” to the search engine.
Anna Bruno – www.fullpress.it
Pubblicato in Business
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