Google Latest Victim of News Media FUD Hydra

I came across an article on BBC regarding the recent attacks against Google by the news media. The basics, if you're not into link chasing, is that following the NAA's annual industry meeting, they've been pushing the blatant lie that Google and other search/media aggregates "steal" their content for profit. In reality what they do is post headlines and small previews of news stories cosslinked to the originating website, which generates traffic and ad revenue for both companies, much like bloggers link sources but rarely copy-paste more than a short snippet. For the past few weeks Big News has been spreading this drek in everything from their nightly news and commentary to interviews on the Colbert Report. Personally, I'm not surprised at all - this is just another head of old media's FUD hydra.

This beast's heads include everything from undermining the credibility of bloggers to attacking the accuracy of community information aggregates like wikis and painting new communication and entertainment media like online games, forums, chat, and social networks as havens for perverts, criminals and terrorists. It's similar to the continuing FUD attacks Microsoft uses against open-source software, only more insidious because they exploit their position as direct media outlets to attack their competition. They also drive further wedges into the generational gap, pitting parents and grandparents against the current generation and turning the youth of families into suspects. This destructive and narrowminded campaign is destroying their relationship with their own prospective future audience and ultimately sealing their fate.

Murdoch and his News Corp. have always been at the forefront of these attacks, evidenced by Fox Noise's frequent attacks against everything internet-related in ridiculous fear-mongering "news" pieces, but most of the other big media companies share at least some of the blame here. They're going down in flames because of it, too (News Corp's stocks have plummeted from around $25 to $6/share in the past 18 months or so). Oh well, it's their funeral. I don't think Google does itself a service by dignifying it with a response, but it's nice of them to pretend at making an honest effort to save these assholes from themselves.