A recently released Pew Research Center report shows that a satirical movie made eight years ago about the media may be more fact than fiction. You may have seen the movie. It’s a ‘mockumentary’ told from the perspective of 2015 in which the merged technology giant “Google-Zon” unleashes the ultimate news machine — EPIC which stands for Evolving Personalized Information Construct. With EPIC, “the sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered and delivered.” The Pew report on the State of the News Media may be a little more under-stated but no less scary when it says, “technology intermediaries now control the future of news.” And why do they say that?

It goes back to that old investigative journalism maxim – follow the money. The report says the news industry continues to lose ground to the technology industry. The five largest tech companies (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL) took in two-thirds (68%) of online ad revenue last year. That’s up five points from the year before. Meanwhile, it says, the news industry is not much closer to a new revenue model now than it was a year ago although the report says the traditional media players still remain the most popular sources for digital news.

The authors of the Pew report say the reason for the tech company dominance is obvious – they can mine a vast amount of information, including and — this is in quotes — “demographics, buying habits, political interests, relationship status and a host of other likes and dislikes.” In the movie, it talks about Google and Amazon combining forces to target their content and advertising by using people’s – again, this is in quotes — “demographics… buying habits… social networks and interests.” Not exactly the same but damn close to it. Meanwhile, the report notes, the news media struggle with the competing agendas – gathering consumer data to make their advertising more targeted versus privacy issues and keeping the trust of their audiences.

The ‘fictional’ flash movie also talks about how this imaginary tech giant “re-sorts, re-calculates and re-combines scraps of information… turning statistics into flexible equations… isolating facts from quotes… (so that) suddenly news is more relevant than ever before.” That also is now closer to fact than fiction. Two fledgling technology companies have created what some are calling “robot journalists” which piece together those scraps of information and write news stories automatically and mechanically with no human interference. The companies, Narrative Science and Automated Insights, are producing everything from financial reports to sports summaries. You will find the articles in everything from corporate reports to prestigious magazines. Look for the byline. And you thought content mills were scary!

Go to the Automated Insights website and read the auto-generated sports story about North Carolina losing to Kansas in the Elite Eight. It reads like any sports story in any newspaper or on any local TV station anywhere. Go to the Narrative Science website and read the corporate sales report for the bagel and cream cheese promotion which, by the way, uses a lot of “you” and “your” words – just like we consultants recommend. Both services make similar points – the amount of data is overwhelming. Both places also make similar points about the cost of “content creation.” The Automated Insights website says, “Compelling stories are not being told because it is too difficult to cost-effectively tell them.” Sign up to use its technology and they promise to “identify the ‘aha’ moments of insight… and… equally important ‘humanize’ those insights.” Not only that but the programs can make it into an article, charts, tables, Interactive Apps, or Mobile and Social versions. Could you do all that? Sitting here writing this report, I wonder if the programs would do a better job than me writing this articles about the State of the News Media report. (Don’t answer that!)

Want further proof of technology’s increasing intrusion into journalism. Here it is: “Our society’s need for credible journalistic knowledge and wisdom has never been greater.” That quote comes not from the New York Times or Washington Post or USA Today, or for that matter, any traditional news organization. It comes from, Richard Gingras, the head of news products for Google. He was speaking at TechRaking 2012, a conference sponsored by Google and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Several ‘heavy hitters’ from the traditional news media took part in the conference of “journalistic doers and thinkers.” The mere fact that Google News is a co-sponsor of a journalism conference speaks volumes. It’s no wonder that the Pew Report raises the question “of whether the technology giants will find it in their interest to acquire major legacy news brands.”

None of this is meant to say that Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Microsoft or AOL should not be doing news. The concern goes back to the point raised in that not-so-mythical movie. In the end, the New York Times ends up defeated, producing a print only version of the news “for the elite and the elderly.” The ‘Google-Zon’ EPIC winds up winning the news wars with its “custom content package for each user… which… at its best is a summary of the world, deeper, broader and more nuanced than anything ever created before… but at its worst, and for too many, is merely a cauldron of trivia, much of it untrue… all of it narrow, shallow and sensational.”

(Author’s Note: If you haven’t seen the EPIC movie, you can search for it on YouTube, using EPIC 2015, or go to epic.makingithappens.co.uk.)