> As I understand it, it's the news media's job to sell papers to people or people to advertisers. If you look at it from a capitalistic perspective, I suppose

> As I understand it, it's the news media's job to sell papers to people or people to advertisers. If you look at it from a capitalistic perspective, I suppose you're right. I meant it from a civics perspective. For "job," try substituting "importance." You can't have a functioning democracy (or representational government) without an informed electorate. > Presently this has arguably not enough to do with informing the populace, but I don't see that this is substantially more the case now than historically. You're right that the motives to sell papers (capitalistic goals) don't require them to fulfil their role as a watchdog (civics goals). I don't think these incentives were ever aligned, and I think that's what you meant by your last statement. I never said that it was any different in the past. Not being "substantially [different] now than historically" doesn't preclude something from being broken. I was just explaining to the parent commenter who said, "I'm not sure how fixing the media would change that."