They should change their business plan. It's clearly not working anymore. Most newspapers in my country are basically dead and kept alive by government's money, ie, tax money.
It would be ridiculous to expect a law to help them. They should build a competitive business.
I see comments like this a lot, but I rarely see proposed alternative business models. The only one I can think of off-hand is ProPublica. Anyone else got anymore? I'm sometimes afraid that the reason newspapers don't pivot to any other structure is because there really aren't any viable models outside of subscriptions (which very few people pay for) or advertisements (which just makes for a sucky experience).
I didn't say taxpayers should absorb their operating expenses. My only point with my comment is that there's a lot of armchair analysis but not even armchair solutions
It's nobody's job to come up with a new business model, except maybe C-suite powerbrokers. But it represents a great market opportunity for whoever does find an alternative business model...
I think news orgs are a special case though. Treating them like regular corporations and letting them profit-seek without regulation is how you end up with Fox News and co.
What's the problem with that? Every news org receives money from companies or individuals with specific interests. You should be able to know what to read and how to read it. I don't think anybody takes Fox seriously (or at least I hope nobody does). You do not need government to "protect" you from that. It doesn't work. Look at Latin America and you'll see how government gets involved in news creation.
>I don't think anybody takes Fox seriously (or at least I hope nobody does).
Try hanging out with a different crowd.
My observation is that if you get information from only one source (or only sources of one ideology), and they repeat it over, and over, and over, you'll end up believing it - no matter how intelligent you are. Blind repetition is all that is needed. I've interacted with very smart people who mostly watch Fox News and will believe stuff that a simple Google search would debunk. Likewise for many liberals who have "interesting" beliefs regarding diet or health.
I think good journalism is one of the signs of a healthy society. Whether the government can foster good journalism or not is a different story. But if most journalism is of the Fox News or Huffington Post ilk, your society's "health" is at risk.
Finally, if you really believe government shouldn't be involved, then remove all laws that provide special protections to the press (if any exist). Examples are shield laws almost every state has. If you accept for special government privileges for journalists, you shouldn't claim no government intervention.
And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or whatever as their primary news source. And that implicitly shapes their view of the world.
A large non-trivial amount of people use Fox News (and maybe some added sources that are effectively in the same sphere) as their primary and only source of information. And they definitely take it seriously. It has enough veneer of legitimacy and polish and portrays a particular, comforting world view to them.
And of course, if you just have a diet of fringe media, no matter your leanings, that will also impact your view of the world.
>And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or whatever as their primary news source. And that implicitly shapes their view of the world.
Everybody has time, if they are interested, to get informed. Time is only an excuse.
Depends on both degrees of informed and capabilities of the investigator.
It can literally be a full time job however. If you can truly keep up with world news and details with the best essentially any intelligence agency (or large financial institution) would gladly take you on board for a good rate doing perfectly honest and legal work just from being able to piece it all together and make the proper inferences and connections.
Informed or not isn't a binary but a dizzying collection of them that can wind up ironically mixed with things like DNA pioneers pushing megadosing crankery.
>My observation is that if you get information from only one source (or only sources of one ideology), and they repeat it over, and over, and over, you'll end up believing it - no matter how intelligent you are. Blind repetition is all that is needed. I've interacted with very smart people who mostly watch Fox News and will believe stuff that a simple Google search would debunk. Likewise for many liberals who have "interesting" beliefs regarding diet or health.
The problem is getting information from only one source.
>Finally, if you really believe government shouldn't be involved, then remove all laws that provide special protections to the press (if any exist). Examples are shield laws almost every state has. If you accept for special government privileges for journalists, you shouldn't claim no government intervention.
I never said I agreed with such laws. With shield laws they can say whatever they want quoting "sources".
Anonymous speech is the cornerstone of free society - without it a mafia state prevails all too easily.
Not to mention its role in helping to move on from shared delusions and letting problems be transparent. There is a reason why the Dust Bowl wasn't like the Great Leap Forward despite both being grand agricultural fuck ups prompted by bad leadership. The one wasn't addressed with "this is fine" and started to receive corrections instead of doubling down for sake of face.
Same reason as why it is acceptable as a limitation of free speech to prevent proof of ballot choice - while people can and should advocate what they believe it being open leads to all sorts of nasty attacks like vote buying and extortion.
How do you expect to stand against bad actors without anonymous speech then? Using that as a rationale against anonymous speech rings of opening the abbot to Viking raiders for fear that someone might be pilfering coppers from the offering plate.
Fox is fine if you can discern the difference between their news shows and their opinion shows. The news programming is good, the opinion programming is click-bait.
Yep. Same with pretty much every other business that asks for law changes, bailouts, etc. If you can't compete, then that means change your business model or go out of business. It's how capitalism works.
And that should be true of everything from media outlets to banks to farmers to car manufacturers and shops.
As it's often said, the mission of journalists is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Making people feel uncomfortable is of course a lousy way of staying competitive.
