5 ms·

Yeah, and FTA: > In the face of highly variable responses from public officials, the media served as an essential ally of the public health community in fighti

Yeah, and FTA: > In the face of highly variable responses from public officials, the media served as an essential ally of the public health community in fighting the pandemic.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
This can be true in this particular context. However, the difference between private media outlets, such as WSJ, and the public health administration is that the latter is being paid for by taxes. Your taxes. The only "free" media are public media such as public broadcasters. Even so, those aren't "free" as in "free beer", they are part of a fiscal budget and the only reason why you can consume them with little restrictions is because that's foundational to public policy. It's perfectly acceptable for private ventures, such as WSJ, NYT or WaPo, to put their articles behind a paywall. Put differently, even during the 1918 pandemic, you would still pay the paperboy on the corner of the street a few nickles to get a copy of the daily. If you think that the WSJ or NYT are mere outlets for public health administration, you're very much mistaken. The "independence" of the Press serves one goal in particular: to critically assert public governance. That independence is a constitutional right, but it's not a guarantee nor an entitlement. Good journalism needs to be paid for. The digital age didn't suddenly deprecate the expense associated with doing research and writing a good piece. So, the statement needs to be amended: > the media served as an essential ally of the public health community in fighting the pandemic, but it can only do so if the audience is willing to pay for the efforts. Yes, I understand that in modern economics, particular outlets are part of larger corporations. A newspaper can be a losing proposition if the costs can be covered through other income channels. The downside of that is the reduction of quality as media channels devolve in sheer revenue machines (ads, subscriptions,...) or heavily biased outlets. Hence why I feel that supporting journalist organisations, who aren't "brands" bought by larger corporations, is where audiences can really make a difference if we hope to let a true "free and independent" press survive. TL;DR: The "free" in "free press" doesn't mean free lunch.
- tuukkah 7y ago
  You don't need to be for-profit to be independent, and you don't need a paywall to get paid - see Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/01/the-guardian-break-even-katharine-viner https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/01/the-guardian-...
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    > You don't need to be for-profit to be independent When I stated "private", I implicitly referred to for-profit and non-profit organizations a-like. I could go on a tangent about the merits and differences between public and private legal entities, non-profit and profit based organizations. I could even dive into the rabbit hole of private organizations who receive grants from public endowments and such. It's an interesting discussion. But that would be splitting hairs. It should be clear that organizing any media outlet implies incurring costs and expenses, regardless. Those need to be covered somehow. And the strategic choices made in picking sources of revenue are going to affect independence in subtle and less subtle ways regardless. > and you don't need a paywall to get paid - see Guardian I didn't say news outlets "need" a paywall. I said that there is no such thing as a free lunch and someone always pays for putting the news out. The last paragraph in that op-ed explicitly states how necessary it is to pay for content: > In the last three years, more than one million people around the world have chosen to support The Guardian financially. Thank you to all of you who have supported us and we hope more of you will consider joining us on this mission — you can do this through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, or as part of our patrons programme. As we approach the Guardian’s 200th anniversary in 2021, your support will help ensure we can keep holding the powerful to account, with purpose, for many generations to come. I was also well aware of the choice made by the Guardian. I omitted the example because their choice entails taking a calculated but huge risk: politely asking their audience to pay for free content could have gone horribly wrong. The audience of the Guardian was willing to follow suit, but another audience might simply indulge in freeloading without limits.
    - tuukkah 7y ago
      Thanks for elaborating! I think we mostly agree. Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I would say in general it's ok as long as your prices are reasonable and there is no surge pricing, but media outlets can have a conflict of interest between reliable reporting and attention-seeking. For WSJ, the middle ground might be to fund their pandemia coverage from their profits elsewhere, and to profit indirectly via new readership.

Yeah, and FTA: > In the face of highly variable responses from public officials, the media served as an essential ally of the public health community in fighting the pandemic.

CaptArmchair 7y ago

This can be true in this particular context. However, the difference between private media outlets, such as WSJ, and the public health administration is that the latter is being paid for by taxes. Your taxes. The only "free" media are public media such as public broadcasters. Even so, those aren't "free" as in "free beer", they are part of a fiscal budget and the only reason why you can consume them with little restrictions is because that's foundational to public policy. It's perfectly acceptable for private ventures, such as WSJ, NYT or WaPo, to put their articles behind a paywall. Put differently, even during the 1918 pandemic, you would still pay the paperboy on the corner of the street a few nickles to get a copy of the daily. If you think that the WSJ or NYT are mere outlets for public health administration, you're very much mistaken. The "independence" of the Press serves one goal in particular: to critically assert public governance. That independence is a constitutional right, but it's not a guarantee nor an entitlement. Good journalism needs to be paid for. The digital age didn't suddenly deprecate the expense associated with doing research and writing a good piece. So, the statement needs to be amended: > the media served as an essential ally of the public health community in fighting the pandemic, but it can only do so if the audience is willing to pay for the efforts. Yes, I understand that in modern economics, particular outlets are part of larger corporations. A newspaper can be a losing proposition if the costs can be covered through other income channels. The downside of that is the reduction of quality as media channels devolve in sheer revenue machines (ads, subscriptions,...) or heavily biased outlets. Hence why I feel that supporting journalist organisations, who aren't "brands" bought by larger corporations, is where audiences can really make a difference if we hope to let a true "free and independent" press survive. TL;DR: The "free" in "free press" doesn't mean free lunch.

tuukkah 7y ago
You don't need to be for-profit to be independent, and you don't need a paywall to get paid - see Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/01/the-guardian-break-even-katharine-viner https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/01/the-guardian-...
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  > You don't need to be for-profit to be independent When I stated "private", I implicitly referred to for-profit and non-profit organizations a-like. I could go on a tangent about the merits and differences between public and private legal entities, non-profit and profit based organizations. I could even dive into the rabbit hole of private organizations who receive grants from public endowments and such. It's an interesting discussion. But that would be splitting hairs. It should be clear that organizing any media outlet implies incurring costs and expenses, regardless. Those need to be covered somehow. And the strategic choices made in picking sources of revenue are going to affect independence in subtle and less subtle ways regardless. > and you don't need a paywall to get paid - see Guardian I didn't say news outlets "need" a paywall. I said that there is no such thing as a free lunch and someone always pays for putting the news out. The last paragraph in that op-ed explicitly states how necessary it is to pay for content: > In the last three years, more than one million people around the world have chosen to support The Guardian financially. Thank you to all of you who have supported us and we hope more of you will consider joining us on this mission — you can do this through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, or as part of our patrons programme. As we approach the Guardian’s 200th anniversary in 2021, your support will help ensure we can keep holding the powerful to account, with purpose, for many generations to come. I was also well aware of the choice made by the Guardian. I omitted the example because their choice entails taking a calculated but huge risk: politely asking their audience to pay for free content could have gone horribly wrong. The audience of the Guardian was willing to follow suit, but another audience might simply indulge in freeloading without limits.
  - tuukkah 7y ago
    Thanks for elaborating! I think we mostly agree. Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I would say in general it's ok as long as your prices are reasonable and there is no surge pricing, but media outlets can have a conflict of interest between reliable reporting and attention-seeking. For WSJ, the middle ground might be to fund their pandemia coverage from their profits elsewhere, and to profit indirectly via new readership.