Saturday, April 21, 2012

Bringing transparency to censorship; Russian politician proposes good news quota

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the Newt Gingrich of Russian politics. He may be full of shit but none the less he from time to time passes an interesting idea.

In light of the previous post about the French election I was intrigued by Zhirinovsky's suggestion that there be a quota for good news.

For example, the Globe story on the French Presidential election could carry this disclaimer;

Important aspects of this story have been omitted in order to meet the good news quota.

Is that not preferable to having some faceless editor arrogantly take upon himself the responsibility of denying you access to the news? At least now the news consumer knows that he or she is missing something.

Alas, the next conundrum will be who gets to decide what news is "good" news.

Again in the case of the Globe's treatment of the French election, the surging popularity of the hard left might be bad news to the paper's editorial board, but could very well be good news to many readers. Who will decide what is what?

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