Just the facts

May 30th, 2013 / Author: admin

When political commentators talk about covering the “horse race” of an election, they are doing more than taking the easy way out in filling air time.  They are devaluing the way we look at even far more complex issues.  Pick one: climate change, immigration, war or peace; the story is always presented as if they were all just another binary, digital choice.  Yes or no, me or you, right or wrong.

What results is an unwillingness to think evidence can sway opinions already held.  But that is not the most damning result of the practice.  It is that if the goal of every initiative, new product or candidacy is to “pick a side,” the players rely on decibels, not details to rally support. What gets lost is any sense of what’s going on.

This notion arises today from coverage of a class action lawsuit making its way through the courts over whether comScore violated online users privacy by downloading a program that collected the data which became the building blocks of the company’s ubiquitous reports.  As MediaPost see’s the story, it bounces between the pillar of the “terrifying” collection of data to the post of “uncorroborated” claims.

Someone should tell the players that hyperbole no longer works. Rather than rail at “rewriting the rules of Internet commerce,” focus on the controls consumers already have when given proper notice, choice, access and the ability to change one’s mind. If, however, if comScore has tried to slide by consumers on any it, they are exposing the rest of us to consequences of legal precedent. That will do far more than put a “crimp in online commerce.”

The best approach to argument in the digital age is to harken back to the advice heard from my black-and-white TV, “Just the facts.”