3 ms·

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests? Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.

afavour 5mo ago
I see that as more of an ecosystem problem. In a world where multiple news organizations have cracked the nut of providing free news you rely on different outlets providing different perspectives. I'm not sure it's possible to make a news organization have absolutely no bias at all.
- idle_zealot 5mo ago
  I'm not convinced it's even conceivable in the abstract to have a news organization with "no bias." You have to make editorial decisions based on something. If you make then based on what you think your readers ought to know, your ideology, values, and understanding of the world inform those decisions and comprise your bias. An objective news outlet would be... what? A live feed of every square inch of the planet provided with no commentary? What we should demand is not unbiased reporting, but transparency in editorial decision making and proactive disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.
autoexec 5mo ago
I think it'd be a good start to have stories selected and reviewed by a diverse team of editors and fact checkers to make sure that the reporting is factual and that it isn't presented from a limited and biased perspective. You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people. That alone would be a huge improvement to most news sources I see today which outright lie and/or are biased in which stories they report on and how they report on them.
- idle_zealot 5mo ago
  > You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people That's the structural problem in a nutshell right there. If you're principled enough to do that, then you're at a disadvantage compared to others who are willing to play the access journalism game and the like. You can try to make it up by using your transparency and high standards to attract readers, but in the marketplace that strategy loses. We've seen this play out. Respected news orgs stand on principle, take a hit but manage to get by on a perception of integrity. Eventually leadership shifts to gradually be more and more business-focused, justifying every step as good for readers and investors, speaking first about the delicate balance between integrity and reach and sustainability. Eventually these words become platitudes as more power shifts to those more interested in profit and power games than in anything the institution was founded on. Every step and every change along the way seems reasonable enough, prudent, even. That's the trap you need to defend against. I don't know how you do that as a business, though. Setting yourself up as a nonprofit might help stave it off, but even that doesn't seem foolproof.
- techblueberry 5mo ago
  I think part of the problem is - what I imagine most educated people want(maybe I’m wrong) when they talk about this “diverse group of editors” is this like classically liberal view that is actually incredibly narrow when one looks at the range of more populist perspectives. Like thefp.com is probably somewhat close to what you describe but is the exact opposite of what I’m looking for. What I want is this theoretical set of educated perspectives that claim to represent a broad range of views; when an actual broad range of views is more likely to include pizzagate than Burkian conservatism.. Maybe thefp.com would be a good starting point to ask - why is that not what you’re looking for? If you squint your eyes it provides a balanced perspective.
  - autoexec 5mo ago
    > Maybe thefp.com would be a good starting point to ask - why is that not what you’re looking for? It's a bit hard to judge the site since it doesn't show full articles, but it does seem to be supporting only one side of at least some narratives. For example, I didn't see any article on the genocide in gaza that wasn't denying its existence. That particular issue aside, my overall impression is that it probably does what many left leaning news sites do: try to remain factually accurate in what it says while only presenting one side of the story and neglecting stories on anything that doesn't forward their narrative. thefp.com is better than many other right leaning news sites since it isn't just outright lying all the time (no pizzagate), but it's not honest reporting or covering enough perspectives. I might have just checked it at a bad time but it also seems very heavy on opinion instead of actual news or investigative reporting. It's got a lot to say about moms and politicians and celebrities but nothing about Nagatitan.
boplicity 5mo ago
Many people think you should avoid having bias. That may be the correct thing in some circumstances, but I think it's better to intentionally have bias, to make that bias explicit, and then to intentionally work within the framework provided by that bias. It should be open, public, and visible. This allows for full transparency with the audience, increasing trust, while also giving a public "anchor" to guage your work against. Many organizations do just this. Outside of news it's often just called "culture" or "branding," but it's more important, IMO, to be explicit, public, and clear about this in a news setting, and very much can serve as away to defend against outside influence.
- nyeah 5mo ago
  On the other hand, some claim that biased news sources can be misleading.
  - UtopiaPunk 5mo ago
    I would call into the question the notion that an "unbiased" news source is even possible. What is that? Even in a hypothetical, entirely objective coverage an event, the news publication must decide whether to give such coverage time and space as compared to other stories. That time/space is balanced against corporate advertising and the corporate interests that own the publication (or the government grants, or the subscribers, or whatever the funding is). Choosing to cover or not cover something is bias, before the news article even exists.
  - boplicity 5mo ago
    This often happens when the news source is not honest about their biases, or if they don't make their biases clear. Fox News is the classic example: Their tagline is "fair and balanced," but their clear objective is to present the Republican/Conservative side of the story. This dishonesty about their bias is at the core of their credibility problems, though, to be clear, it does work in terms of effectively deceiving many people.
    - socalgal2 5mo ago
lofaszvanitt 5mo ago
What a shill comment :D.

afavour 5mo ago

I see that as more of an ecosystem problem. In a world where multiple news organizations have cracked the nut of providing free news you rely on different outlets providing different perspectives. I'm not sure it's possible to make a news organization have absolutely no bias at all.

idle_zealot 5mo ago
I'm not convinced it's even conceivable in the abstract to have a news organization with "no bias." You have to make editorial decisions based on something. If you make then based on what you think your readers ought to know, your ideology, values, and understanding of the world inform those decisions and comprise your bias. An objective news outlet would be... what? A live feed of every square inch of the planet provided with no commentary? What we should demand is not unbiased reporting, but transparency in editorial decision making and proactive disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

autoexec 5mo ago

I think it'd be a good start to have stories selected and reviewed by a diverse team of editors and fact checkers to make sure that the reporting is factual and that it isn't presented from a limited and biased perspective. You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people. That alone would be a huge improvement to most news sources I see today which outright lie and/or are biased in which stories they report on and how they report on them.

idle_zealot 5mo ago
> You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people That's the structural problem in a nutshell right there. If you're principled enough to do that, then you're at a disadvantage compared to others who are willing to play the access journalism game and the like. You can try to make it up by using your transparency and high standards to attract readers, but in the marketplace that strategy loses. We've seen this play out. Respected news orgs stand on principle, take a hit but manage to get by on a perception of integrity. Eventually leadership shifts to gradually be more and more business-focused, justifying every step as good for readers and investors, speaking first about the delicate balance between integrity and reach and sustainability. Eventually these words become platitudes as more power shifts to those more interested in profit and power games than in anything the institution was founded on. Every step and every change along the way seems reasonable enough, prudent, even. That's the trap you need to defend against. I don't know how you do that as a business, though. Setting yourself up as a nonprofit might help stave it off, but even that doesn't seem foolproof.
techblueberry 5mo ago
I think part of the problem is - what I imagine most educated people want(maybe I’m wrong) when they talk about this “diverse group of editors” is this like classically liberal view that is actually incredibly narrow when one looks at the range of more populist perspectives. Like thefp.com is probably somewhat close to what you describe but is the exact opposite of what I’m looking for. What I want is this theoretical set of educated perspectives that claim to represent a broad range of views; when an actual broad range of views is more likely to include pizzagate than Burkian conservatism.. Maybe thefp.com would be a good starting point to ask - why is that not what you’re looking for? If you squint your eyes it provides a balanced perspective.
- autoexec 5mo ago
  > Maybe thefp.com would be a good starting point to ask - why is that not what you’re looking for? It's a bit hard to judge the site since it doesn't show full articles, but it does seem to be supporting only one side of at least some narratives. For example, I didn't see any article on the genocide in gaza that wasn't denying its existence. That particular issue aside, my overall impression is that it probably does what many left leaning news sites do: try to remain factually accurate in what it says while only presenting one side of the story and neglecting stories on anything that doesn't forward their narrative. thefp.com is better than many other right leaning news sites since it isn't just outright lying all the time (no pizzagate), but it's not honest reporting or covering enough perspectives. I might have just checked it at a bad time but it also seems very heavy on opinion instead of actual news or investigative reporting. It's got a lot to say about moms and politicians and celebrities but nothing about Nagatitan.

boplicity 5mo ago

Many people think you should avoid having bias. That may be the correct thing in some circumstances, but I think it's better to intentionally have bias, to make that bias explicit, and then to intentionally work within the framework provided by that bias. It should be open, public, and visible. This allows for full transparency with the audience, increasing trust, while also giving a public "anchor" to guage your work against. Many organizations do just this. Outside of news it's often just called "culture" or "branding," but it's more important, IMO, to be explicit, public, and clear about this in a news setting, and very much can serve as away to defend against outside influence.

nyeah 5mo ago
On the other hand, some claim that biased news sources can be misleading.
- UtopiaPunk 5mo ago
  I would call into the question the notion that an "unbiased" news source is even possible. What is that? Even in a hypothetical, entirely objective coverage an event, the news publication must decide whether to give such coverage time and space as compared to other stories. That time/space is balanced against corporate advertising and the corporate interests that own the publication (or the government grants, or the subscribers, or whatever the funding is). Choosing to cover or not cover something is bias, before the news article even exists.
- boplicity 5mo ago
  This often happens when the news source is not honest about their biases, or if they don't make their biases clear. Fox News is the classic example: Their tagline is "fair and balanced," but their clear objective is to present the Republican/Conservative side of the story. This dishonesty about their bias is at the core of their credibility problems, though, to be clear, it does work in terms of effectively deceiving many people.
  - socalgal2 5mo ago

lofaszvanitt 5mo ago

What a shill comment :D.