From the Apple press release:
The 2018 Midterm Elections section helps readers follow the latest on the elections with breaking news, exclusive highlights and analysis from reliable sources selected by Apple News’ team of experienced editors. Readers can quickly get up to speed on the most relevant topics and candidates by accessing the new section in the Apple News app from a banner across the top of the For You tab, as well as through Top Stories and the Spotlight tab.
Curated. That’s key. The question is, can the curation team do their work in an unbiased, balanced fashion?
I’m all for comment moderation but news feed moderation doesn’t sound good to me.
This is why I prefer my Feedly/Reeder setup with my own set of feeds in RSS. I do the curation and can pull together what I think are useful sources.
I use Apple News a bit but the only subscription I got through iTunes was the Washington Post. I subscribe to The New York Times and the New Yorker and have their apps on my phone and pad yet News considers me a non-subscriber to those in my News feed. Stupid. It should be smart enough to figure out that I’m using the source’ apps and am logged in as a subscriber.
Every news source you feed into Feedly/Reeder moderates the news. ALL of them make editorial judgements. What to cover, what not to cover, how to write the headline, what emphasis to give stories, etc.
The upside is that you can add sources you feel are trustworthy. The downside is the same thing – you can easily create a little bubble of news for yourself. The Apple News section is valuable because it might break you out of that bubble a little but introducing you to sources that are credible but not those you’d find on your own. Since we don’t have to choose, I’d advocate looking at both.
Agreed. I do use Apple News although as I say above, I don’t like how it handles subscriptions.
These days I’m glad to be in a bubble: I don’t need anyone to tell me how to feel about Trump and the awful things he’s doing.
“can the curation team do their work in an unbiased, balanced fashion?”
No. There is no such thing, and aspiring to do this is, in my opinion, a key factor that is the sad state of affairs that is our media.
Rationale: an “unbiased” media tries to cover both sides of an argument. If one side of the argument has gone off the deep end, by trying to unbias you are literally biasing the argument. Worse, the “sides” know this and can trivially game reporting.
My personal preference: I’d much rather see an emphasis on media that reports based on verifiable facts, not “one side says the sky is blue, the other says the sky is green, you decide!”
But Trump is not harming himself, so he is not the stupid. He is defending his interests, both political and economic, and there are many angles to it, and it should be not untended.
My question is, how do I get to this new section? The only way I have found so far is via an ad in my For You section. The problem is, once I’m there I can’t favorite it. So what happens when the ad is no longer there? How do I get back to it on a regular basis? Talk about a horrible UI/UX design.