YouTube Wants To Get Into Eyewitness News

I didn't see this posted, but as usual, please let me know if it has.

I ran across this today on Gizmodo and it immediately rustled up some mixed feelings for me. Below is the article from Gizmodo:

YouTube doesn’t want to give you a reason to turn on CNN. The Google-owned video hosting site is trying to legitimize eyewitness accounts of breaking news by launching YouTube Newswire, a special feed for footage it verifies as accurate.

Video uploaded from people on the scene can provide crucial context, but these services can also amplify bad information, since many people share before making sure what they’re sharing is real. YouTube Newswire will be fact-checked by editors at a “social media news company” called Storyful, and YouTube is also launching a project called “The First Draft Coalition” to help journalists find trustworthy footage. That project will launch in the fall, but in the meantime, Newswire is already up.

The top two footage channels are covering the mass murder that occurred in Charleston last night, and flooding in Oklahoma and Texas. Most of the approved Charleston videos are from news outlets, which makes me wonder if this’ll actually help people find unique eyewitness video or if it’ll rely too heavily on official sources.

Now I get where they are coming from with doing this. It is nice to have one place where all these videos of breaking news are consolidated and easily found in one place. That is a plus to me.

What bothers me is the fact that its "APPROVED" video's that filter through a secondary company, Storyful. On one hand this could be good to filter out all the BS video's but on the other hand it's an opportunity to censor out videos that may, or may not fit a biased agenda. This could be a major issue in being able to freely see some of these breaking news videos.

I guess it won't be too bad if you can still mine original videos from the user's individual pages. Maybe I am just barking up the wrong tree, but it still makes me uncomfortable that they are being filtered through an approval process.

What are your thoughts ATS?

a reply to: SgtHamsandwich

Google is becoming too big of a corporation and it's beginning to worry me. They are branching out into so many different areas that it's starting to be all encompasing. I don't like the thought of them becoming a news source, regardless of what form it's in.

I for one welcome our new Google NewsLords.

a reply to: EternalSolace

Google will destroy itself from the model of " spreading themselves too thin " issue.

They'll soon have so many managers for each sector they operate within, that control and co-operation will be hard to achieve.

This also plays into the possibility that they are ground zero of the singularity.

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
I for one welcome our new Google NewsLords.

I don't think I do. It scares me that one of the major, few places left to see these types of videos is now moving to go through an scrub and approve process.

Take this simple senario:

A cop kills someone, three different people record said killing. Two videos clearly show it's murder by cop, the third video is kinda open ended and leaves room for speculation on however the media/cops portray what happened. Now with this new approval process, the two videos might not be approved that show what really happened for whatever reason whoever is pushing money behind the scenes and these videos don't see the light of day. Now the otherone gets approved and that's what is presented to the masses.

Not saying that's what would happen, but it leaves opportunity for this to happen and I don't like that.

This is not a good sign, but predictable. The same people that support Google, just put the kabosh on the Kim Dotcom's network, and close to shutting down the Dark web. This is the next step for them to try to further bridle and censor our information, while Google launches its Spacenet service.

Just another monopoly ay work.

a reply to: SgtHamsandwich

What could possibly go wrong?

"We now cross to our live correspondent, Bullshivers underscore 1138. What's the latest Bull?

"Well Tom from my selfie sticks perspective it appears that the cat is still stuck in the tree and presumed adorable."

True Journalism is a dying breed-I don't see youtube pulling out the defibrillator anytime soon.

a reply to: SgtHamsandwich

Good say goodbye to cnn.

sounds like a great idea.
true news! would they let us?

originally posted by: buddha
sounds like a great idea.
true news! would they let us?

A cable program or an entire network; who has the megabucks to pull this off (no bias just true in your face news)? What a concept.