This in reference to the accusations (1, 2) that Techcrunch made towards Last.fm, which have been criticised by many, not least by Last.fm and CBS itself. For those that haven’t been following it, accusations were raised at Last.fm for sharing (private) user-data with the RIAA, the US institution best known for suing old ladies for sharing music on their PCs. Recently, CBS/Last.fm issued another statement that these accusation are completely false. More recently, today in fact, news was released that the Last.fm founders quit. Now, I, as a blogger and not a media-person (there is a difference), don’t think that this last piece of circumstantial evidence bodes well for CBS/Last.fm.

Let’s first define media and truth as I think its relevant to the discussion. By media, I mean any publication that has it in their core-statutes (or whatever they are called) to inform the public as accurately and honestly as possible. This excludes blogs, in my opinion, as most of us have made no such agreements with our readers (sorry, guys!). Instead, some of us use it as a diary, others as a commentary, and others as a pseudo reporting service (on Tech IT Easy, we try to restrict ourselves to two and three). Techcrunch, on the other hand, while having started as a blog, can now easily be called an organisation reporting the news, with all the conditions that come with it.

Truth: in the media, truths are verifiable facts. You can verify facts in two ways. One, by quoting your source, preferably primary, short and simple. Two, by being a reputable source yourself. In other words, the Financial Times can tell us that an anonymous source has told them that Martians have visited the president and that statement will hold more value than if I told you that Martians have visited the president. Why? Because the Financial Times has more to lose than me (perhaps).

While Techcrunch is obviously not the 121-year old institution that is the Financial Times, it is in many ways it’s equivalent in this time of new online-focussed media. It has a lot to lose by giving out the wrong information. Techcrunch repeated its allegations several times even, without quoting sources I should mention, which leads me to believe them.

So why not trust CBS/Last.fm over Techcrunch? One, a corporation stating that it hasn’t done harm to its customers is simple self-preservation. Two, while I have been following Last.fm even before it was Last.fm, and while I actually find its founders very sympathetic, I think that they experienced the hypocrisy that corporations sometimes live by (it may be in their statutes even), and decided to quit. If this happened to my baby, I would quit too.

I am not saying that everything Techcrunch writes should be taken at their word (nor even the Financial Times), but as recent history has shown us, there is something wrong in the world of the music- and video-industry (you know, that other media-industry), and the only protection we regular people seem to have, is the media calling them out on the sometimes very nasty things they do. And while we should keep double- and tripple-checking the facts, if only to keep the Techcrunches et al. on their toes, if the RIAA is involved and a big company like CBS, I think I’ll side with public media.

End blog post.

Vincent

P.S. the irony: I think that CBS is also a news reporting organisation. However, in the case of the Last.fm “business unit,” it is not!

Like

Unlike

Related posts:

1. The state of media 2.0 – challenges and opportunities
2. Happy Blog-Day – 5 Blogs for you!
3. Social media is dead (not a post about social media)
4. 7 reasons why I'm stopping using Last.fm for music & 4 reasons why I'm starting to use Drop.io + Facebook Connect
5. The behavioural economics of mass-media