4 ms·
The media seems to think along the lines: if it generates revenue, then its fit to print. Until traditional news media can stand on its own again, absent corpor
by Simulacra 7y ago
The media seems to think along the lines: if it generates revenue, then its fit to print. Until traditional news media can stand on its own again, absent corporate largess, it will not be free and independent.
- jacquesm 7y agoThink of 'the media' as more than one person acting with different motivations. On the one hand there are the commercial people, they try to generate revenues, if possible to pay out to the owners but at any rate enough to keep the lights on. This will generate a drive to monetize and is to a large extent responsible for the trivial and the overly click-bait bits. Then on the other hand there are a relatively large number of reasonably good individuals who have dedicated their lives - sometimes at considerable risk - to keeping watch on what happens in society: the journalists. Within the best of the media companies these are free to operate without interference from the commercial - and sometimes political - part of the machine. The more the walls between those two break down and the more editorial control the commercial part has over the journalists the worse a publication will be. You can see this mechanism at work in great detail in those publications that have a clear mandate imposed upon them from above, less so in better run organizations. None are entirely free from it but the range is quite wide.