About NewsScape

About NewsScape's philosophy: a pragmatic voice for the silent majority...

The role of an objective and honest news/information broker is to present facts, and for readers/users to say what they want about them - and occasionally step in when facts are misrepresented in opinions. 'Half-truth" spin (fake news) is now accepted as frequently more insidious than obvious old-fashioned lies. But those who seem to exist to call out fake news (especially in echo chamber environments) rarely seem to suffer pain when their judgement has been proved wrong, and the news/opinion is shown to be valid.

The most effective propaganda has always included a large element of truth and familiar points of reference to put readers off their guard. We don't often hear the expression "partially fake news", since that begs further explanation.

The substitution of professional journalism by user-generated social media content is largely to blame. And that is because there are no easily explained or understood globally applicable laws in the world of "free speech". Anywhere beyond trite ephemera, responsible journalism takes time, and costs money. But advertisers mostly care about grabbing eyeballs in the attention economy. Outrageous lies that attract huge audiences are good for business ...as long as brand image is not negatively impacted.

When a formerly respected organization like the BBC gets caught with its pants down (like Sir James Savile apparently was many times when BBC blind eyes were being turned - according to many who were told to look the other way) it lost all credibility. Professional journalists or not, the Cliff Richard “trial by helicopter” ought to have led to wholesale sackings and new brooms at every level. But it didn’t, and the whole of British journalism's credibility suffers as a result of such an endemic failure. Ongoing evidence of BBC malfeasance is being offered by former BBC staffer Alex Belfield, who is promising to examine the corporation in detail in upcoming legal actions. We wait attentively...

We figure that the "silent majority" usually makes the right judgement calls (wisdom of crowds?) even when the BBC and the establishment dismisses them as "pandering to populism", as we try to help the silent majority clear its throat, and find a voice amongst all the noise and name-calling. The controversial notion of "Cultural Marxism" may well apply.

This noise has been deliberately created to shout down, distract, dilute and frustrate the silent majority. NewsScape wants to create systems that can filter and drown out the malicious misdirection by well-organized vociferous minorities that distract by shouting above their weight.

We especially want to deal with the way that many commentators propagate the impression that anyone that is not in synch with their narrow view of the world must be an uneducated extremist - the term "moderate" has all but disappeared. Nevertheless, it’s become acceptable to be an emotionally incontinent “snowflake” and abandon old-fashioned common sense and, with it, all sense of proportion.

The acceptance and promotion of bullying that lies at the core of Cultural Marxism is the real and present danger; it is important to expose the abuse of manipulative psychology and return to common sense and civility. The notion that our "echo chamber" universities can "no platform" anyone (at all) is insidious - especially when they are prepared to back up these decisions with violent demonstrations.

NewsScape set out as a "loose federation" of sensible people who have earned their living from professional journalism at some time in their lives. We don't need special statements or community standards to specify or define "inclusivity and diversity", since tolerance had become absorbed and adopted as part of the fabric of modern existence a long time ago, before virtue signalling and convoluted legislation was introduced to treat us all like children.

Surely it is better for freely-expressed opinions to define the originators of those ideas, than contrive filters and constraints that distort and conceal the actual intentions?

Yours etc
Lord NewsScape

12feb19/ 07apr22

The NewsScape Federation Mission...

... is to evolve a better and more intuitive way to organise the internet - and especially honour Sir Tim Berners-Lee's original idea that it should be available to level the playing field by providing opportunities for all. His vision was not for gated and intensively farmed communities, built from echo chambers with occupants fed on clickbait, whose personal data is harvested and sold to advertisers.

TBL was coy about naming names, Lord NewsScape is not. The factory farms where fake news and all manner of mischief takes place are those owned, aided, abetted and managed by Facebook/ Meta, Google/Alphabet, Twitter, Amazon, PayPal, eBay etc!

Healthy Western capitalist economies grew in an era of (some) competition, where "antitrust laws" existed - to prevent precisely these types of abusive monopolies arising. There was once legislation that forced the break-up of cartels and monopolies - but the process (and what is left of it) was ponderous and slow moving, and tech was not.

As a result, massive global businesses now wield more money and influence than most governments.

The intuitive NewsScape channel scheme allows us to delegate full or partial responsibility for any channel to anyone that can demonstrate they share the federation ethos and objectives.

NewsScape is, at its heart, a structured and managed "trusted" domain name scheme that cannot be easily abused (unlike most ICANN names) by being sold on the basis of first come-first served - without any attempt to establish the bonafides of users.