4 ms·

While I agree that hyper-local news is absolutely vital to discovering and highlighting corruption and ineffectiveness (my local city board screwed up on a gran

While I agree that hyper-local news is absolutely vital to discovering and highlighting corruption and ineffectiveness (my local city board screwed up on a grant for transportation, because one of our elected officials is incompetent and lazy. A complete lack of local news ensured he could sweep it under the rug, to the detriment of the elderly and rural poor around me), I don't understand your last paragraph. How is being for profit inherently against being fair and honest? If they are up-front with their funding sources (like how NPR makes clear whether they have donors who are involved in any story they report at the start of the story), then what is the harm? Bias would be clear, at that point.

sychian 6y ago
By stating they are for-profit, they state what their incentives are. Does that mean they will be unfair or dishonest? Not necessarily. But it does mean that their incentive is not providing fair and honest coverage, but getting as many eyeballs on ads (or subscriptions) as possible. In the news "industry", this has repeatedly been shown to lead to: * yellow journalism (what click-bait was called before there were clicks) * content driven by their owners' and advertisers' best interests rather than the best interests of the public at large * content geared toward the views of the majority at the expense of the rest of the public.