News Flash

Today I want to propose a dream of mine, but first an aside. I’ve written a novel about a “perfect” society (and trying to find an agent for the novel at the moment; everybody cross their fingers for me, and if you want a copy, I’ll send you the .pdf!) The society is not really perfect, but the folks on this other planet are trying their best. They live in a world without natural resources, other than water, but also without predators or competition for the resources they’ve brought with them. The only thing that could kill them off is their own stupidity. So obviously, the novel is partly about them trying not to be stupid.

One of the things that has come up is that everyone needs to be very, very honest. Nothing can get done if they’re not. If someone is unhappy, they have to say something. If the unhappiness comes from something in their society, then the people there can try to fix it, as best they can. But nothing can get fixed if the problem isn’t discussed. Getting along is the most important job they have to insure their survival. They also have to be informed about what’s going on in order to act, react, and make good decisions.

The last part is true here on Earth but we’ve never really codified (or appreciated) the job of journalists, and now their job is being usurped by social media. ( https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2025/dnr-executive-summary). I’m guessing that some of this is from a very well known orange man saying that all traditional sources are “fake news”, while promoting his own fake news. Carole Cadwalladr had an interesting Ted talk a while back, and one of her points was that we can’t see what people are reading and what information they are using to make decisions. (https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy)

The thing is, in the face of AI, and its “hallucinations” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence) ) we need to be sure of the sources of our information. I keep going to my local press, which is mostly paid for by a local tax and therefore less in need of finding revenue. This makes them, the most part, less corruptible, much like the BBC (which is in a similar situation in Britain). Neither have any incentive to willfully mislead people. They try to get things right.

I realize that I’ve quoted several sites already in this post, but these are sources that I consider to be mostly reliable: Reuters, Ted Talks, Wikipedia. These have all had their issues in the past, but let’s take them one by one: Reuters will issue corrections for any mistakes or misinformation that they’ve published as soon as it becomes known. This goes from the spelling of someone’s name to just getting something wrong, but they’ve proven to be very, very accurate (even if they didn’t want to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to whatever the orange man wanted). Ted Talks are people talking in their own words. Ted has made some…interesting…choices in speakers over the year, but it’s those people speaking in their own voices. You believe them or not, but it’s not faked or manipulated. The last is Wikipedia, which is the best example of the wonders of the early internet still in use. It’s not always accurate, but they are trying. The writers, who are just people passionate about sharing information, are trying their best. Willful disinformation is erased as quickly as it appears. It is because Wikipedia more or less works that I believe my fictive society can more or less work.

My dream, going back to that, is to have an official, international code of ethics for journalists. They sign on and they do their best. It would be a lower standard than lawyers who have a legal obligation of ethical conduct (and they do, despite whatever people think about lawyers; they can be fined or go to prison for not respecting their obligations). For every person who signs on to my invented ethical group of journalists, there needs to be one to two volunteers (like on Wikipedia) to verify that the journalist is crossing his or her “t”s and dotting his or her “i”s. There should be a database, which could just be a Wikipedia page, for everyone to look as see how that journalist has done over the years. When they write something online, there should be a link to this site.

We need something though. Journalists are just people, for the moment. They are either hired by news organizations, or work independently and try to sell their stories to news organizations. It would be a way a compliment to snopes.com, which is also a source I trust to try to get things right.

So let’s dream of a way to counteract the coming world of disinformation!