[jerf]

"Newspapers can't globally decide to emphasize particular stories and have as great an effect."

One way to read the new's industry's issues with Facebook is that, actually, yes they did, and they're trying to protect the turf that Facebook is encroaching on.

The media has an incredible power to set the agenda, in both a positive (choosing to cover) and negative (eliminating a story by simply ignoring it to death) sense, and it uses it to an extent that can only be called "routine".

[3xblah]

Imagine setting the agenda on a per reader basis. Newspapers set the agenda for their entire audience. Facebook sets the agenda for each personally identifiable reader, or specific groups of readers. Facebook tracks what each one reads, when, etc. Having billions of non-anonymous web users all visit the same website, tracking and recording everything they do, coercing them to supply all manner of personal information, then manipulating what they see based on the collected data, this is a propaganda machine with power equally as incredible as the media.