You Don’t Appreciate What You Got Until It’s Gone A free press has long been considered a critical pillar of a well-functioning democracy. With recent events worldwide, it has become more apparent to many that quality journalism is a luxury that cannot be taken for granted. There is no denying that over the recent generations, there has been a gradual degradation of its perceived importance to society. As society’s value for the institution shrinks either progressively or dramatically, it becomes increasingly more vulnerable to powerful players with opposing interests battering it beyond repair.
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The futuristic film The Minority Report features Tom Cruise as the head of the PreCrime division. The division has the technology to determine ahead of time whether someone is about to commit a crime. The division’s patrolmen assemble at the location when the crime is expected to occur to arrest the “perpetrator.” Tom Cruise’s character (and the general population) have full faith in the system. His beliefs reach an impasse when the technology predicts that he will — within 36 hours — murder a man named Leo Crow, whom he does not know.
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The Nobel-winning biologist has drawn global criticism with unfounded pronouncements on genetics, race and intelligence. He still thinks he’s right, a new documentary finds. It has been more than a decade since James D. Watson, a founder of modern genetics, landed in a kind of professional exile by suggesting that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than whites. In 2007, Dr. Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, told a British journalist that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really.
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The ultimate aim of The Honest Scoop is to improve the quality of journalism to the theoretical limit. The project is currently in its infancy. I am still exploring its future direction. We are looking for software developers and journalists to contribute to the project. The project will be heavily focused on using technology to improve the standard of journalism in an objective way. You can contact me at thehonestscoop@gmail.
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