4 ms·

Yes. The power dynamic has shifted considerably, for a lot of reasons, but the result is access is withheld to only the most obsequious press. If you want to ru

Yes. The power dynamic has shifted considerably, for a lot of reasons, but the result is access is withheld to only the most obsequious press. If you want to run a pub that's independently critical, fun, experimental, or anything other than sycophantic, you either need to have the funding/resources to do it sans access or bank enough goodwill with slobbering endorsements sufficient to excuse one hot take every six months or so.

permo-w 3y ago
in my opinion the solution to this is subsidies and grants for journalism. create more bodies roughly like the BBC, maybe run them through the Universities, and have them hand out grants for journalism. set up competing publicly-owned print media companies don't nationalise the current industry or outlaw them in any way, just create competition that doesn't have to focus on profit people may hate the idea of public ownership, but what is the alternative? ownership by Murdoch and a handful of billionaires, corporate funded and staffed by people only in it for the paycheck
- rainonmoon 3y ago
  You took the words right out of my mouth. I really believe this would be an enormous good for society.
- jahewson 3y ago
  This gives you a media that is obsequious and sycophantic towards the people handing out the grants.
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    As a great example, the current BBC and its tendency to lean towards UKGOV fawning in its reporting since not only do they control the purse strings (and have been tightening them on a regular basis in response to perceived BBC trangressions) but also get to appoint the people in charge (cf the last chairman and his blatant links to the Tories.)
    - permo-w 3y ago
      I do not have a problem with this. this is expected behaviour and easily understood and corrected for. it's not so easy to understand and correct for the corporate biases of the private media
    - kalleboo 3y ago
      Wasn't the whole point of the TV licensing scheme to sidestep that kind of influence? What went wrong?
      - permo-w 3y ago
        nothing went wrong. the BBC is for the most part absolutely fine, this is just a narrative that's being heavily pushed by the BBC's competitors
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > the BBC is for the most part absolutely fine Anything non-political, sure, they're pretty good. Unfortunately, on politics, they're (currently and for the last 10-ish years) far too lenient on, chummy with, and subservient to the Tories to justify the licence fee.
        rainonmoon 3y ago
        My brother in Christ if you think being lenient towards conservative governments is a condition limited to public ownership, turn on a TV.
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > a condition limited to public ownership It is not, obviously, but it is something that shouldn't be happening at the allegedly impartial news flagship that everyone is forced to pay for.
        3y ago
  - permo-w 3y ago
    yeah well that's better than a media that's obsequious and fawning to anyone with a few hundred million in the bank. it's competition. cover more bases
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  This only exchanges some overlords for other ones. Grant committees get hijacked by special interests all the time and Important Bigwigs Who May Not Be Crossed are not exclusive to the private sector. They mostly gravitate towards seats of power, and if those seats move to some ministry instead of a corporate headquarters, so will they. Looking at the sorry state of science funding (public grants that reward mediocre projects from established teams and publish-or-perish mentality), I think the result would be the same ossified structure with massive power concentrated in a few hands. Perhaps a lot of output, but not much quality. At the same time, most Western governments fight against the unstoppable juggernaut of aging societies. We will have serious problems financing healthcare and social care in a decade or two, depending on the precise shape of the demographic curve in your country. As a result, I think the opposite will take place: privatization of more and more services in an attempt to wean them off subsidies and get them to self-support somehow. We can already see the growing power of the "grey voting bloc" here in Czechia. Having a public pension system (yet another idea that Americans may find appealing), more and more efforts of the politicians go towards appeasing interests of the pensioners at the cost of everything and everyone else. Doing anything else is a recipe for electoral wipeout.
WorldMaker 3y ago
In my opinion the only solution is to murder any and all ideas of "review scores". Those seem to be the most harmful homogenizing force. They eliminate nuance. They hide subjectivity behind an illusion of "objectivity" (because numbers are always "objective", right?). They make it too easy to spot "outliers" from the norm (and "punish" them if you are a media giant planning the next ad contract or layoff plan or a rabid fanbase planning a hate raid). Of course, murdering review scores is an extreme solution and also probably an impossible feat. Too many businesses are built upon the illusion of aggregate review scores as "objectively" good things (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Yelp, Amazon, AirBNB, Uber, and on and on and on). But we can still dream the impossible dream that more people wake up to how rotten these statistics are below the surface and it eventually becomes a cultural mandate to stop using bad metrics for cultural homogenization.

permo-w 3y ago

in my opinion the solution to this is subsidies and grants for journalism. create more bodies roughly like the BBC, maybe run them through the Universities, and have them hand out grants for journalism. set up competing publicly-owned print media companies don't nationalise the current industry or outlaw them in any way, just create competition that doesn't have to focus on profit people may hate the idea of public ownership, but what is the alternative? ownership by Murdoch and a handful of billionaires, corporate funded and staffed by people only in it for the paycheck

rainonmoon 3y ago
You took the words right out of my mouth. I really believe this would be an enormous good for society.
jahewson 3y ago
This gives you a media that is obsequious and sycophantic towards the people handing out the grants.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  As a great example, the current BBC and its tendency to lean towards UKGOV fawning in its reporting since not only do they control the purse strings (and have been tightening them on a regular basis in response to perceived BBC trangressions) but also get to appoint the people in charge (cf the last chairman and his blatant links to the Tories.)
  - permo-w 3y ago
    I do not have a problem with this. this is expected behaviour and easily understood and corrected for. it's not so easy to understand and correct for the corporate biases of the private media
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    Wasn't the whole point of the TV licensing scheme to sidestep that kind of influence? What went wrong?
    - permo-w 3y ago
      nothing went wrong. the BBC is for the most part absolutely fine, this is just a narrative that's being heavily pushed by the BBC's competitors
      - zimpenfish 3y ago
        > the BBC is for the most part absolutely fine Anything non-political, sure, they're pretty good. Unfortunately, on politics, they're (currently and for the last 10-ish years) far too lenient on, chummy with, and subservient to the Tories to justify the licence fee.
        rainonmoon 3y ago
        My brother in Christ if you think being lenient towards conservative governments is a condition limited to public ownership, turn on a TV.
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > a condition limited to public ownership It is not, obviously, but it is something that shouldn't be happening at the allegedly impartial news flagship that everyone is forced to pay for.
        3y ago
- permo-w 3y ago
  yeah well that's better than a media that's obsequious and fawning to anyone with a few hundred million in the bank. it's competition. cover more bases
inglor_cz 3y ago
This only exchanges some overlords for other ones. Grant committees get hijacked by special interests all the time and Important Bigwigs Who May Not Be Crossed are not exclusive to the private sector. They mostly gravitate towards seats of power, and if those seats move to some ministry instead of a corporate headquarters, so will they. Looking at the sorry state of science funding (public grants that reward mediocre projects from established teams and publish-or-perish mentality), I think the result would be the same ossified structure with massive power concentrated in a few hands. Perhaps a lot of output, but not much quality. At the same time, most Western governments fight against the unstoppable juggernaut of aging societies. We will have serious problems financing healthcare and social care in a decade or two, depending on the precise shape of the demographic curve in your country. As a result, I think the opposite will take place: privatization of more and more services in an attempt to wean them off subsidies and get them to self-support somehow. We can already see the growing power of the "grey voting bloc" here in Czechia. Having a public pension system (yet another idea that Americans may find appealing), more and more efforts of the politicians go towards appeasing interests of the pensioners at the cost of everything and everyone else. Doing anything else is a recipe for electoral wipeout.

WorldMaker 3y ago

In my opinion the only solution is to murder any and all ideas of "review scores". Those seem to be the most harmful homogenizing force. They eliminate nuance. They hide subjectivity behind an illusion of "objectivity" (because numbers are always "objective", right?). They make it too easy to spot "outliers" from the norm (and "punish" them if you are a media giant planning the next ad contract or layoff plan or a rabid fanbase planning a hate raid). Of course, murdering review scores is an extreme solution and also probably an impossible feat. Too many businesses are built upon the illusion of aggregate review scores as "objectively" good things (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Yelp, Amazon, AirBNB, Uber, and on and on and on). But we can still dream the impossible dream that more people wake up to how rotten these statistics are below the surface and it eventually becomes a cultural mandate to stop using bad metrics for cultural homogenization.