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An independent paper shouldn't give two shits on your opinion on what it should or should not be doing. Nor should it be caving to pressure from owners/investor
by salawat 2y ago
An independent paper shouldn't give two shits on your opinion on what it should or should not be doing. Nor should it be caving to pressure from owners/investors to not endorse either. That's the point of independence. People seem to have forgotten what the word means.
See, the whole independence thing is pre-requisite on no one the fuck else influencing you. Which means that yeah, sometimes you get up to things others wish you wouldn't. Without a Press willing and capable of muckraking where everyone who funds them/makes their work possible wishes they wouldn't, there is literally no capital P Press. It is no longer a thing. Period. The machine and company, and assets might be there. Journalists might be running around, but it isn't fulfilling the purpose of the Free Press.
Which isn't, btw, being a mouthpiece for funders. It's keeping everyone aware of what's going on. Even in spite of people really wishing you wouldn't.
- WalterBright 2y agoA newspaper that does political advocacy is no longer delivering the news, it is presenting advertisements.
- maxerickson 2y agoSo there's no value for a community for a newspaper to publish a letter to the editor saying that the municipality should do a better job removing garbage from a commercial district? Because that's what the absolute position you are taking is. The editorial board of a newspaper isn't different in that sense than a letter to the editor.
- WalterBright 2y agoProviding a soapbox for the public to respond in is not at all the same thing as political advocacy.
- maxerickson 2y agoIt's exactly the same thing. It's not like they publish every letter they get, at which point they are already engaging in your political advocacy.
- WalterBright 2y agoYou would be correct if they only published letters that were on one side.
- maxerickson 2y agoWhat does "one side" even mean in this context? Do you think editorial boards at large newspapers are homogeneous? By way of word count, I expect the average editorial board is much more evenly divided than the crank letters that they choose not to publish.
- WalterBright 2y ago> What does "one side" even mean in this context? Now you're arguing the definitions of words, pretending to not understand. No thanks.
- maxerickson 2y agoNo, I'm pointing out your simplistic framing of what a newspaper does and asking you to defend reality instead of that simplistic framing.