The UI of Obedience

- 2 minutes read - 214 words

I visited Fox News today to get a party-line take on an event.

There’s no search interface.

Where can I research those terabytes of You Report, I decide goodness?

Where can I research those terabytes of You Report, I decide goodness?

If the medium is the message, the message is: This is not here for you to explore. You are here to get told. You get to consume.

Compare:

The literal first graphic is a search interface

The literal first graphic is a search interface

But I often hear “Oh, your side does the same thing, it doesn’t report about my side’s topic of deep concern.” But no, this isn’t about media bias, it’s about whether your organ of media thinks you should search it; whether you should use it.

In this era, Fox is returning to the newspaper: we are authority and here’s what we, your betters, think. You may cheer along with us now. It’s a very 19th century attitude to media. The Times suggests, on the other hand, that all of their stories are atomizable, locatable, data of record for the nation. It suggests that you might want to get told, or harvest their morgue for pull quotes or context. By implicitly referring to the non-ephemerality of the archives, the Times suggests durability, trust, historicity.

Fox suggests their content will be as durable as their owner’s, Rupert Murdoch’s, “Page Six” girl.