It’s no secret that we all believe more or less what we want to believe regardless of whether the facts argue otherwise. It’s only recently that we’ve decided that this is a virtue and not an obstacle to overcome. Now, Apple TV is making it easier than ever to stay comfortable with Watchup, a news app that will soon begin streaming through the set-top box.
The app, which will be available on fourth-generation Apple TVs, feeds news stories to you from sources like CNN, Fox News, CBS News, Bloomberg, Sky News, and many more. The process of getting started should be familiar to anyone who’s used a web radio service in the past few years: you select your areas of interest, the content begins to flow, and as you respond with your virtual likes and dislikes, Watchup learns what kind of news to deliver to you.
While this is a dubious idea for music listening—the process is, after all, designed to keep you in your comfort zone—it’s a dangerous idea for news media, one whose ramifications are coming home to roost with particular gusto this election year. We depend on the news to mediate the events of the world for us; when the news tells us what we want to hear—that Islamic terrorism is an imminent threat (patently false), for instance—it affects not only the way we understand our world but the way we interact with it. And that means not just the way we vote and shape policy, but the way we treat the people around us.
Variety, who are reporting the launch of Watchup in an exclusive, quotes the company’s founder and CEO Adriano Farano as saying “Personalization is the future of TV news.” Which is, of course, half true; it’s actually the present of TV news, but it is the future, too. And while the idea of never having to come across a point of view we find reprehensible or challenging has its appeal (you’re reading a website that has twice called Last Week Tonight one of its favorite TV shows of the year, after all), it hardly seems like a viable primary mode for encountering the world around us.
You can watch a promo for Watchup below.
(via Variety)
