Thursday, August 27, 2009

It's Not Making Up The News If You Find It On The Internet

Rupert Murdoch :
"Quality journalism is not cheap...."
No, it's not. So thank fuck for made-up stories about celebrities :
"When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical."
And so today, the Sydney Daily Telegraph dips a toe into a future celebrity scoop 'news'
fountain :



For now, you can read about and speculate on how Michael Jackson may have faked his own death, for free at the Daily Telegraph. But what about in six months?

Will people pay to read about Michael Jackson sightings when Murdoch launches his massive gated 'News' portal in the new year?

Probably.

Enough may.

The motivation then is not to even bother to find out if some obvious hoax has a remote strand of credibility before running it as news. They don't bother now. The Daily Telegraph story asks 'Hoax Or Real Deal?' The newspaper's editors know the video isn't real. That's not the point. It's click bait, and so it must run.

Next year, if a Michael Jackson sighting, or a particularly thrilling piece of daylight UFO vid, is vastly popular across the global Murdoch online NewsOTainment empire, and people are paying for it, millions of them, then the motivation, the profit motivation, is not to report news that happens, but create the News(OTainment) user stats show people are paying to read.

If paying readers want Michael Jackson sighting stories, they'll get Michael Jackson sighting stories. If they want to believe that there are motherships hiding behind the Moon and that a global invasion by Saturnians is imminent (or may have already begun), then this is the reality Murdoch subscribers will be delivered.

'Aliens Already Among Us Video : Hoax Or Real Deal?'

Lucky then, that Murdoch owns television and movie studios.

It's the future of news. You don't have to embrace it, or believe it, just enjoy it, like the smell of toast or the sound of steady rain on a tin roof.


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