5 ms·

It's so crazy to me how many people are OK with ad-supported news while complaining about the objectivity of news generally. IMO (having worked for news organiz

It's so crazy to me how many people are OK with ad-supported news while complaining about the objectivity of news generally. IMO (having worked for news organizations), this one of the biggest problems with the industry. I worked for a non-profit news org in 2016 and we spent a lot of time and energy covering the presidential race. One of the biggest ethical challenges we constantly faced as an organization was the reality that a certain candidate for president drew astronomical traffic to our site when his name was in a headline compared to everyone else, which meant more revenue for us. It wasn't even close. We hated this because we wanted to apply coverage to candidates equally, but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore. And so every time we ran another story about this candidate, we had to ask ourselves if it was appropriate or not since he was not local to our state or region. The news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived and it's not easy to leave money on the table with any sort of regularity. And when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that". It's a no-win situation. Here's the bottom line: ad-based news models rely heavily on traffic metrics to generate ad revenue, which is derived from serving ads. I believe this is the single most poisonous aspect of making news today because those who make news can quite easily see what kind of news sells and what doesn't. As long as news organizations are focused on driving traffic to their site to generate ad revenue, this will be a problem. But people don't want to pay for news, so where does that leave our system? We're not willing as a society to give up the convenience that this deeply corrupt system gives us.

deleted 4y ago
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drewcoo 4y ago
> It's so crazy to me how many people So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think? The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way. > news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .
rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
I don't think it's the fact that money comes in from ads per se--it's the simple fact that news corps are businesses too and that they need money to survive, so they need to serve the interests of whomever the money is coming from. If people wanted news to be as objective as news could be, then they better be prepared to apportion their taxes to news orgs (should news orgs be privately or publicly owned is a longer discussion but the latter is implied), to read news that are as boring and as declarative as an encyclopedia article, or to avoid news altogether and to be physically present in the places where news happen to see events for themselves, but people are not willing to do any of those nor are those always feasible. So up to what extent is the expectation of objectiveness from journalism realistic? I mean, I never thought for the life of me that news are supposed to be 100% objective, precisely because events are being reported from the understanding of someone else. This is why you consume information from more than one source. What if the people consuming news are part of the problem?
thewebcount 4y ago
> But people don't want to pay for news I don’t know that that is actually true. I know that for me, I’m not interested in paying for: - The daily homicide report - 3 minutes of news per half hour, mixed in with 19 minutes of “stories” that are paid placement for products, movies, recording artists, etc., followed by 8 minutes of advertisements, mostly for medications I don’t need for some reason - Weak interviews and reporting that ignores very obvious lies from the people being reported on with absolutely no mention of that fact - Both-siding a story where one side has clear facts and the other side is quite possibly literally crazy, or at the very least being obviously heavily manipulated by special interests and that’s not mentioned at all - Reporting on what someone tweeted, especially with no indication that what was tweeted is known to be bogus or unconfirmed I do happily give to PBS and NPR because they have reasonable coverage of most news, but over the last 5 years, even they have been sucked into the sensationalism and reporting on tweets that regular news outlets have fallen victim to. They’re still miles better, but it’s a low bar to begin with.
- MBCook 4y ago
  This is a huge part of why I stopped watching “the news”. “Representative X said A. When asked about it, representative Y said they were wrong so B. Now sports.” Huh? Who was right? Was it a matter of fact you can judge? If so why don’t you? Even on opinions there is usually good contextual facts you can add. But when you just repeat crazy or dangerous or factually incorrect you normalize it. And by never calling anyone out on things you signal it’s all equally correct. “The president said F. We said no, G. He said but F, H, and I are all true, I said them. Sunny tomorrow…” Soundbites without analysts are horrible. Repeatedly letting people get away with lying about objective facts and continuing to give them airtime to say it is useless. Reporting “science” that comes from press releases on non-reviewed pre-release papers in journals no one has heard of that contradicts what you said was real last week destroys trust in science. And telling me feel good stories about kids who started lemonade stands to pay for their own chemo completely misses the point. And I don’t care about Kanye. It doesn’t matter other than the fact that at this point people appear to be taking advantage of his mental illness. But no one is covering that that I’ve seen.
HWR_14 4y ago
> but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore Why? I have no doubt it was more profitable to cover that one candidate, but the point of a non-profit news org is that you shouldn't have to follow mass market dictates like that. > when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that" I feel like that's your own fault. You're a news organization, you could have gotten the word out. IIRC in 2016 there were lots of articles about the meta of covering X, and by 2020 X explicitly not being covered the same way was an official stance of news organizations.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

drewcoo 4y ago

> It's so crazy to me how many people So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think? The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way. > news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .

rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago

I don't think it's the fact that money comes in from ads per se--it's the simple fact that news corps are businesses too and that they need money to survive, so they need to serve the interests of whomever the money is coming from. If people wanted news to be as objective as news could be, then they better be prepared to apportion their taxes to news orgs (should news orgs be privately or publicly owned is a longer discussion but the latter is implied), to read news that are as boring and as declarative as an encyclopedia article, or to avoid news altogether and to be physically present in the places where news happen to see events for themselves, but people are not willing to do any of those nor are those always feasible. So up to what extent is the expectation of objectiveness from journalism realistic? I mean, I never thought for the life of me that news are supposed to be 100% objective, precisely because events are being reported from the understanding of someone else. This is why you consume information from more than one source. What if the people consuming news are part of the problem?

thewebcount 4y ago

> But people don't want to pay for news I don’t know that that is actually true. I know that for me, I’m not interested in paying for: - The daily homicide report - 3 minutes of news per half hour, mixed in with 19 minutes of “stories” that are paid placement for products, movies, recording artists, etc., followed by 8 minutes of advertisements, mostly for medications I don’t need for some reason - Weak interviews and reporting that ignores very obvious lies from the people being reported on with absolutely no mention of that fact - Both-siding a story where one side has clear facts and the other side is quite possibly literally crazy, or at the very least being obviously heavily manipulated by special interests and that’s not mentioned at all - Reporting on what someone tweeted, especially with no indication that what was tweeted is known to be bogus or unconfirmed I do happily give to PBS and NPR because they have reasonable coverage of most news, but over the last 5 years, even they have been sucked into the sensationalism and reporting on tweets that regular news outlets have fallen victim to. They’re still miles better, but it’s a low bar to begin with.

MBCook 4y ago
This is a huge part of why I stopped watching “the news”. “Representative X said A. When asked about it, representative Y said they were wrong so B. Now sports.” Huh? Who was right? Was it a matter of fact you can judge? If so why don’t you? Even on opinions there is usually good contextual facts you can add. But when you just repeat crazy or dangerous or factually incorrect you normalize it. And by never calling anyone out on things you signal it’s all equally correct. “The president said F. We said no, G. He said but F, H, and I are all true, I said them. Sunny tomorrow…” Soundbites without analysts are horrible. Repeatedly letting people get away with lying about objective facts and continuing to give them airtime to say it is useless. Reporting “science” that comes from press releases on non-reviewed pre-release papers in journals no one has heard of that contradicts what you said was real last week destroys trust in science. And telling me feel good stories about kids who started lemonade stands to pay for their own chemo completely misses the point. And I don’t care about Kanye. It doesn’t matter other than the fact that at this point people appear to be taking advantage of his mental illness. But no one is covering that that I’ve seen.

HWR_14 4y ago

> but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore Why? I have no doubt it was more profitable to cover that one candidate, but the point of a non-profit news org is that you shouldn't have to follow mass market dictates like that. > when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that" I feel like that's your own fault. You're a news organization, you could have gotten the word out. IIRC in 2016 there were lots of articles about the meta of covering X, and by 2020 X explicitly not being covered the same way was an official stance of news organizations.