I think there's a fundamental misalignment of interests in the news business between 1) readers who want high-quality, unbiased reporting, 2) advertisers who wa

I think there's a fundamental misalignment of interests in the news business between 1) readers who want high-quality, unbiased reporting, 2) advertisers who want to sell something to the readers and are thus biased, and 3) the news companies who want to satisfy both readers and advertisers. The problem is similar to the interaction between a customer seeking financial advice from a financial consultant who makes money selling securities: a consumer can't know whether he's being given unbiased information or a sales pitch. Perhaps people don't pay for "news" because they don't usually pay for sales pitches. One way to solve this is to openly declare one's identity. Consumers of unbiased news or entertainment are willing to pay; but the consumer of unbiased news will be more intolerant of paying for the news by seeing ads: how can someone deliver the unbiased news while at the same time being a salesman? Providers of unbiased news should sell their service, unbiased news, to their customers. Consumer Reports does this very well. They stress the fact that they don't sell advertising and that therefore, their only aim to please their only customer by providing unbiased information. Most other media have a hard-time selling non-bias because they're not really in the non-bias business. They want to have it both ways: they want to sell unbiased news to readers while at the same time pitch their readers on behalf of their other customers, vendors. To do this they have to sell (perhaps implicitly) their readers on the proposition that bias doesn't matter. At this point most media companies have already lost the customers who understand and value unbiased news. The customers that are left are really looking for entertainment. If this analysis is right, you should not expect to see the most successful ad-supported news media be unbiased.