News: Countering some of the recent anti-You Tube press reports, Charles Arthur of The Guardian restores some truth in reporting: “The truth? YouTube hasn’t changed at all, only people’s perceptions or expectations of it. The company states in its user agreement that uploading copyrighted material is illegal, and a similar warning appears before you upload a clip. But of course, fewer than 1% of its users upload anything. No wonder they don’t know. “
Analysis: One thing I’ve learned over the past month in reading dozens and dozens of news articles about YouTube: there’s a lot of questionable, if not downright bad, “journalism” out there. Legal issues are often reported with a very thin understanding of the law, while a good number of articles tend to accentuate whatever can generate readers — that typically means something bad or dramatic. I hate to sound like some radical or curmudgeon, but it’s sometimes hard to find good journalism in the media. That’s why I think this whole blogging phenomenon has taken hold.
