Reporting Live...Anonymous may have a news site soon!

This just in, Anonymous wants to bring you the latest breaking news! Apparently, Anonymous wants to host a web site in more of a formal reporting-the-news form. They have been working towards this for the past couple of months. The amount of support is pretty impressive and having a news site to report out of would be great. I am however, wondering how long they’ll be able to keep it up before the government starts breathing down their neck, especially if they release stories in which the government considers to be “private” or “sensitive” information. Regardless many people have vocally and monetarily support this idea. Anonymous “raised $54,000 for the purpose of launching a site that would take the group’s nascent newsgathering efforts beyond Twitter and Tumblr” (Gillette).

What’s unknown is why Anonymous doesn’t use or rely on Facebook to gather information or spread their message. “Among other things, the site will aggregate news from various indie news sources. It will also integrate information from Twitter while largely shunning Facebook (FB)” (Gillette). Perhaps Anonymous feels as if Facebook is unreliable. For whatever reason, Anonymous states that they will accumulate data from multiple sources, clearly one of which will not be Facebook, and substantiate these into one steady stream, their news site.

What I like most about the idea of this site is that it will be informative and educational, without various users chiming in and arguing via the comment section. Your Anon News officially stated “there will be no comments section” (Gillette). People will be able to submit stories while the web site will filter out these submissions based on “quality, authenticity, and relevance” (Gillette). I like this because it still gives the common user a place to contribute and be a part of the online Anonymous community while restricting any potential rants and ravings via the comments section.

I’d like to digress for a quick second and give my opinion on the use of a comments section and why I whole-heartedly applaud Anonymous for not putting them into their news site. I often find a lot of the times, that news stories on different websites are interesting and legitimate, only to read the ignorant and obnoxious comments by users. In my mind, I know the hosts of these sites aren’t responsible for these comments, but it still ruins the content of the main articles. On the other hand, and not to completely contradict myself, I understand the comments section gives people access to discuss, ask questions, elaborate, and so on but more often than not the comments don’t add any content to the articles and usually end with some kind of argument which may or may not even be related to the original story in the first place.

Overall, I think the idea of the website sounds wonderful. The goal is to actually report real news that has more of a global and ethical impact. Anonymous wants to report stories such as “Why isn’t CNN-Turk airing footage of [] massive protests” instead of stories about “Kardashian[‘s] [exploding] butt implants” (Gillette). This is a breath of fresh air of real journalism that has more or less begun to elude mainstream in light of more popular, but not necessarily more informational, stories. I can’t wait until Anonymous’ news site is up and running.

Works Cited:

Gillette, Felix. "Anonymous Prepares to Enter the News Business." BusinessWeek, 3 June 2013. Web. 3 June 2013. <http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/anonymous-prepares-to-enter-the-news-business#r=rss>.