> I think this kind of competitive malice is no worse than say, the malice in business to outcompete. I think it matters that the goals of journalism are osten

> I think this kind of competitive malice is no worse than say, the malice in business to outcompete. I think it matters that the goals of journalism are ostensibly different from the goals of business. The goal of business is to get people to buy something, maybe with some sideline in getting them to keep doing it over a long time. The goal of journalism is, I think, to show people important things that are happening. Optimizing engagement/acquiring customers is the goal for business, optimizing readership isn't supposed to be the goal for journalism. If it is, you run into, well, the things people complain about in modern journalism (and not-so-modern yellow journalism). And I think journalists whose primary goal is notoriety are more likely to optimize for controversy and readership, not showing people important things. That's sort of orthogonal to "civility", I guess. But I question the idea that adversarial journalism is the way to go. My understanding is that good journalists have excellent people skills and can write critically and truthfully while cultivating relationships in an area that enable them to keep understanding what's happening in that area. Probably the number of journalists who are genuinely able to do this is not high, but we should hope for more of them.