YouTube's slogan is "Broadcast Yourself." And the slogan of YouTube's parent company, Google, is "Don't Be Evil." But maybe the new slogans should be "Don't Be Evil--Watch What We Want You To Watch."
This story gets a little complicated. But it's worth paying attention, because everyone in The Cable Game understands by now that the new media are being muscled by the even newer media.
And so as YouTube/Google get ever more powerful, they should be get even more scrutiny. That is, all Americans should be paying attention as to what YouTube/Google is doing--what biases that they might have. And the same holds true for all the Silicon Valley media, including Facebook and all the rest.
Why? Because we don't want to turn back!
In the last 20 years, Americans waged a peaceful and legal media revolution against ingrained media bias--first with talk radio, then with Fox News, then with blogs. The result has been that the media are probably more diverse--more fair and balanced!--than ever.
But just at the moment when things seem to be going OK, even-handedness-wise, a new potential media unbalancer has emerged--one that could prove to be a lot more powerful than liberal-leaning CNN or CBS ever were. It would,indeed, be a shame to see all those gains "Googled"--that is, see the gains of the 80s and 90s disappear under the onslaught of exclusively web-based media such as Google and YouTube.
Am I paranoid to see this as a potential danger to free and unafraid discourse? I don't think so. Google's subtle tilt to the Left has been visible for years now. And as everyone knows, Google is top-heavy with liberal Democrats and big Democratic donors. Former Clinton White House aide Bob Boorstin is the top in-house politico for Google, unless, of course, you count Google-lord Al Gore.
So now to the new controversy: It seems that YouTube, which had always bragged about how the users not only generated the content, but also the placement of such content (by "voting" with their clicks), has been fiddling with user-generated content and its placement when it comes to politics. In other words, if you want to show yourself air-guitaring or you want to post copyrighted material, YouTube doesn't care. But if you want to make a point about who should be the next president--YouTube and its "editors" care. And have been tweaking the site as a result, shaping it to their own taste. Folks, that's taking us back to the old days of bias and The Spike.
It should come as no surprise to Cable Gamers that the liberal media have been implicated--YouTube had made a deal with CNN to help stage a presidential debate, and that gave CNN the access it needed to start trying to cook the video-placement process. The Clinton News Network, of course,could never be trusted not to put its liberal thumb on the editorial scale.
Fortunately, the blogosphere has been all over this YouTube/CNN connivance. And now, YouTube says it was all a big mistake, a few technical issues, no reason to be alarmed, nothing to see here folks, just move along now.
Indeed, let's hope that that's the end of it. But you know what TCG sez: If you don't trust, then all the more reason to verify.
Because here's the bottom line: The MSM know that they have suffered major defeats in the last two decades. Think about it: if one side goes up, then the other side must go down. If the media have grown more fair & balanced in the last two decades, that means that the forces of unfairness and imbalance--i.e. the liberal media--have suffered an inversely proportional defeat.
And you can bet your clicker that those liberal MSM-ers haven't forgotten, or forgiven. So don't be surprised if liberal refugees from the MSM wash up in Silicon Valley, there to bring their biases to the new media.
YouTube and Google could fix this, of course, by being fair and balanced and transparent--and so let's see if that's what they do. The blogosphere is, indeed, Wide Awake!
