8 ms·

The truth is, journalism has cratered. However, most are not ready to accept the truth, since they still believe the media are an essential part of democracy.

• carlmr 3y ago
  Good news reporting is an essential part of democracy. We don't have it anymore. Nobody wants to pay for it. We'll see how it goes.
  • lynx23 3y ago
    Lamenting the unwillingness to pay for trash is a hopeless cause. The cat bites its own tale. Most news outlets I know have deteriorated so much in quality that I would never even think about paying for any of that propaganda. Give me a good, balanced, non-pliticized and honest news site, and I might consider supporting them.
    • saintkaye 3y ago
      You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already. The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you and the majority that does only affects you in that it excites, scares or entertains you. It wasn’t that news got bad or people got more evil, it’s that the value of information cratered and now it’s not even expensive enough to come with editors.
      • robertlagrant 3y ago
        > You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already Which one are you talking about?
      • account42 3y ago
        > The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you. There is plenty of news that affect me, it just happens to (mostly) not be covered in the news. And when it is it is often propaganda rather than even remotely unbiased reporting.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
      • lynx23 3y ago
        Is it possible we know each other from StackOverflow perhaps? Because I remember a bunch of people on there who think it is productive to start a posting with "You don’t actually want that".
        • robertlagrant 3y ago
          I think we met on Reddit? I remember there were loads of people stereotyping Stack Overflow people on there.
    • csunbird 3y ago
      I am looking for a neutral, down to the earth style newspaper, focused on world news, not only west/USA. I can definitely pay for that!
      • ghaff 3y ago
        The Economist has pretty broad world news coverage. You probably won't do better than that. (US outlets are much more US--and to some degree Europe--centric. The US used to have decent weekly news magazines but they basically don't exist any longer and, in any case, were fairly US-centric.
      • prox 3y ago
        https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ It gives ratings on headlines and it helps to get an overview of the news.
        • fluidcruft 3y ago
          I truly love ground news, but it constantly forgets where you are in the feed when you open an item so you'll be reading down fifty items or so and open one then go back to the list and have to start scrolling from the top again. It really, really wears on you. I wish they would finally fix it. Despite that major annoyance (it really makes me wonder whether they even dogfood), the Blindspot is so interesting I still power through.
          • prox 3y ago
            Hopefully we have one of the devs reading hackernews :)
        • lynx23 3y ago
          [world-emoji-by-google.png?width=16] Someone please tell 'em about alt tags.
    • carlmr 3y ago
      But you see the chicken and egg problem here. News outlets have deteriorated because they can't make money. If people actually paid for them they might have a chance to hire competent people and do investigative journalism. But now they're being paid mostly by ad revenue and a handful of subscribers. So they have to publish trash to optimize for clicks.
      • lynx23 3y ago
        Its even worse. In my country, the government has given a lot of money to media companies, right around covid. That magically made them all comply and report the same government propaganda. However, even non-conspiracy-theory-people have realized what is going on here. After the fact, I believe no sane person would want to give them money, because, you know "the state is already paying em, why should I?"
        • account42 3y ago
          Here the government gives the media companies money all year every year. And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money that I am forced to pay for a contract that I never agreed to or want and can't opt out of.
          • carlmr 3y ago
            Are you both Germans? What is here? >And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no?
            • account42 3y ago
              > Are you both Germans? What is here? In my case here is Germany, yes. > If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no? Indirectly, yes but the details are very different. With taxes the government decides on how much tax you pay for various things and then the money goes into the general budget from which the government again allocates funds for various things. Allocating more money towards overpaid entertainment personalities and greedy sports organizations in this model would mean less money the government has to pay for other things so you'd hope they would put some thought in what expenditures are really needed. The budget is also periodically re-evaluated. Taxes are also generally either based on something you choose to do or based on income, meaning they are means tested and usually increase progressively in order to put less of a burden on those that already have less. Taxes are also collected by government institutions which means whatever organizatons are involved in providing the services the taxes pay for won't need to know my banking details or place of residence. The TV fees are very different. Here the legacy media companies get a flat sum from everyone (with some exceptions) without consideration for either what burden this places on the individual payer or what funds are really needed to provide the respective services. Politicians only ever have to think about the amount when the companies involved ask for bigger handouts. Instead of considering of these legacy media companies are still needed with the internet and available, or if we need the current excess (with a separate TV station per state plus two for the country overall), these media companies and the politicans that enable them have decided that making their services available online means that everyone is a potential user and must pay. Unlike taxes these fees are not collected by the finace ministry but by a separate organization representing the media companies which automatically receives the place of residence for everyone registered in Germany.
  • ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    Did we really stop paying for good reporting? Or did reporting get bad first, and people stopped paying after? I'd pay for a good, reliable news source, but I can't find one at all, and I don't pay.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      Not to put pre-1990s journalism on some sort of a pedestal but people basically stopped paying first because their only free option previously was the evening news.
    • Lendal 3y ago
      We stopped paying first. As we got more comfortable over the past few decades, we wanted the news to do our bidding and confirm our prejudices. Because you can't please everyone, they failed, and so we stopped paying. Now all we get is corporate PR and AI-generated clickbait like this. It's a pay-to-play world.
  • chiefalchemist 3y ago
    Aka The Fourth Estate. I laugh (read: cry) everytime I hear a wannabe "journalist" lament the "threats to Democracy", not realizing - or at least not acknowledging - that they and their ilk have been leading that effort, shamelessly, for years. If there's any group that knows first hand about what "the threat to Democracy" looks like, it's contemporary "journalism".
    • carlmr 3y ago
      They are victims and perpetrators at the same time though.
      • chiefalchemist 3y ago
        Victims? How? You're not a victim when your wounds are self-inflicted.
  • neilv 3y ago
    > Nobody wants to pay for it Spoken on a popular site that routinely uses pirate mirrors to circumvent news site paywalls. :)
    • prox 3y ago
      The thing is that news has an utilitarian function : we should be able to debate what is going in the world around us. What’s going on in the world is another word for news. News should be free in a way.
      • neilv 3y ago
        I agree that news/journalism should be accessible to everyone. But piracy of paywalled content just provides a relief valve for whatever demand there is for accessibility, and keeps the 'news' a property of parties like Rupert Murdoch (in the case of WSJ).
• maratc 3y ago
  > The truth is, journalism has cratered. There's an old quote addressing exactly that: "When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth." It's not that journalism has cratered, it only reached a level of what people are willing to consume.
  • lynx23 3y ago
    Ahh, the good old "it is only for your good" argument. I don't buy it. There wouldn't be any unhappy media consumers if that statement were universally true. Everytime I read something which has been badly researched or which is blatantly trying to manipulate me and I feel like this is bad journalism, is the media givng me what I want right now? Nope.
    • maratc 3y ago
      You might be mixing between "giving people what they want" and "giving you what you want". The media is in the former, not latter, business.
      • lynx23 3y ago
        The average person is to dumb to deserve quality reporting is another way to put what you just said. Even if that might be true, it doesn't change anything about my perception of modern journalism.
        • robertlagrant 3y ago
          It's not about deserving. You're looking at this from a slightly odd angle. It's just saying there's no conspiracy; just market forces.
• chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Most are not ready to accept it because - ironically - the media pumps the ether with a narrative that what they are doing is journalism, has value, etc. I have a friend who went to school for journalism and (I swear) doesn't understand the difference between news and op-ed. Few are willing to admit they've been duped so they double down on embracing the con. It's a vicious cycle.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• poulsbohemian 3y ago
  >they still believe the media are an essential part of democracy. It is, but maybe not in its traditional forms. Further, social media was supposed to be part of the solution but apart from a few shining examples has instead become about selling us crap, spying on us, and holding our attention away from the problems of the world. This all isn't to say that media in some other form or rebirth of these old forms isn't still the answer to information sharing and reengaging civic dialog.
• rchaud 3y ago
  Are you taking issue with the facts reported in this article, or just taking a generalized swipe at outlets you don't like, and lumping it all under 'journalism'? Without the reporters at the WSJ, your doctors could be making decisions on your care on the basis of Theranos blood tests.
• lkrubner 3y ago
  Journalism is essential to democracy. Without journalism, democracy must die. See here for details: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-an-illiberal-democracy https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-an-illiberal...
  • lynx23 3y ago
    Fake journalism during COVID-19 killed so much trust in democracy that it seem to be an anti-thesis to what you just said. Bad journalism apparently can kill democracy as well.