The Web As An Alternative Source Of News Judgement

Web has evolved into an alternative source for news judgment. "It's as if people let the news sink in, paused to register what beheading of an American, video-taped and broadcast... really means, and then said: Okay, now I want to see for myself. Show me, television set. Show me, newspaper. But there was no showing, so they went to the Web. It's not a discovery that people absorb the news in stages like this. But it's different when we can see it happening in real time, and "read" the shifts in demand and interest-- because we have Web tools like search engines, links and lists. (And yet those tools have many flaws.) From an alternative source of news, the Web has evolved into an alternative source for news judgment."