2 ms·

> That sort of rule would quickly become very hard to untangle. For example news papers are often the only good source of reliable, in-depth book reviews and fo

> That sort of rule would quickly become very hard to untangle. For example news papers are often the only good source of reliable, in-depth book reviews and for historical reasons the companies that sell books and sell news papers are often owned by the same parent company.... > But it is not exactly clear how you would in a legal sense draw the line. You could probably address that problem by permitting common ownership in cases where the company could prove to a court that it's implemented effective and rigorous firewalls, such that the reviews are independent and not affected by the common ownership and do not show evidence or tampering of bias. My understanding is those kinds of firewalls are de rigueur in the newspaper industry.

SahAssar 5y ago
Sure, but it'd be extremely hard to prove if that bias has penetrated that firewall or if it hasn't. I think the reason it has (mostly) worked for journalistic institutions is that it is a profession that are taught a set of ethics as a part of their education and it has a history of adhering to those ethics. Proving a non-bias for what is your own actual financial interest seems almost impossible. I'm not saying it can't be done ever, but I would not want to have to argue either side of that. I said this in a comment below but I think it is relevant here too: Restricting speech is in general hard, what would be much easier is to require clear and obvious disclosure. Since journalistic ethics already requires that it should only require changes for dishonest actors. EDIT: To clarify: those firewalls are often in the journalistic institutions currently but it becomes a whole other ballgame when something needs to be proven in court. The suggestion to make them legally mandated is where I think we run into problems.

2 ms·

> That sort of rule would quickly become very hard to untangle. For example news papers are often the only good source of reliable, in-depth book reviews and fo

by tablespoon 5y ago

SahAssar 5y ago
Sure, but it'd be extremely hard to prove if that bias has penetrated that firewall or if it hasn't. I think the reason it has (mostly) worked for journalistic institutions is that it is a profession that are taught a set of ethics as a part of their education and it has a history of adhering to those ethics. Proving a non-bias for what is your own actual financial interest seems almost impossible. I'm not saying it can't be done ever, but I would not want to have to argue either side of that. I said this in a comment below but I think it is relevant here too: Restricting speech is in general hard, what would be much easier is to require clear and obvious disclosure. Since journalistic ethics already requires that it should only require changes for dishonest actors. EDIT: To clarify: those firewalls are often in the journalistic institutions currently but it becomes a whole other ballgame when something needs to be proven in court. The suggestion to make them legally mandated is where I think we run into problems.