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> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests That was true for a long time, but the Internet in fact greatly

> Most news in the largest nations is in the hands of a handful of gargantuan monied interests That was true for a long time, but the Internet in fact greatly increases the news options: The Internet lowers barrier to entry compared with the old newspaper (presses and distribution costs) and TV (broadcast facilities, spectrum licenses, etc.). My locality has several publications that wouldn't exist without the Internet. Also on larger scales there is the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, ProPublica, etc. etc. etc. Think of the world of IT news; how many of those would make it as print publications? The Internet also makes news from other localities far more available. I can easily read news from all over the world; in fact HN links to it. The Internet and web technologies also lower the cost to free for much news (with all the complications that involves), and allows aggregation and other facilitation. And of all the news sources I've referred to (local, national, international, etc.), think of how incredibly long the list of owners is and how diverse it is.

Karunamon 8y ago
Serious question - how many of those many news sources have you taken the time to trace their ownership or influencers? As an example, you mentioned BuzzFeed - did you know that Comcast nee NBCUniversal invested roughly $400M into them[1] in the last couple years? Or that they were caught deleting posts[2] critical of their advertisers in 2015? Did you know that Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch are all owned by Verizon[3]? I'm not sure the proliferation of sources amounts to much, as many of those sources are hardly independent at the end of the day. What's your favorite flavor of tech news.. Verizon or Comcast? I'm not being fatalistic here, I'm saying that most people don't bother to do this work, and so they aren't aware of how few owners actually exist in the journalism market. This is not a healthy state of affairs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_on_editorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc
- forapurpose 8y ago
  That is very informative and helpful; thank you. I wasn't aware or didn't remember all that. I still think there's more diversity now than before the Internet. There are several more publications in my locale, for example, and some are more focused on local public affairs than the leading local newspapers were (which I assume have to appeal to a wider audience). And there are the other sources I mentioned. Do you know if it's objectively worse than before the Internet?

Karunamon 8y ago

Serious question - how many of those many news sources have you taken the time to trace their ownership or influencers? As an example, you mentioned BuzzFeed - did you know that Comcast nee NBCUniversal invested roughly $400M into them[1] in the last couple years? Or that they were caught deleting posts[2] critical of their advertisers in 2015? Did you know that Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch are all owned by Verizon[3]? I'm not sure the proliferation of sources amounts to much, as many of those sources are hardly independent at the end of the day. What's your favorite flavor of tech news.. Verizon or Comcast? I'm not being fatalistic here, I'm saying that most people don't bother to do this work, and so they aren't aware of how few owners actually exist in the journalism market. This is not a healthy state of affairs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Funding [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_on_editorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed#Advertiser_influence_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Inc

forapurpose 8y ago
That is very informative and helpful; thank you. I wasn't aware or didn't remember all that. I still think there's more diversity now than before the Internet. There are several more publications in my locale, for example, and some are more focused on local public affairs than the leading local newspapers were (which I assume have to appeal to a wider audience). And there are the other sources I mentioned. Do you know if it's objectively worse than before the Internet?