The former president spent the weekend spewing dangerous nonsense at a rally. The press spent its weekend polishing it into palatability.
They analyzed how it would affect their numbers and determined it would turn off too many MAGA viewers and not attract enough other viewers to make up the difference. News for profit was always a bad idea.
I think I understand your point, but if news isn’t for profit, who would pay the reporters? I used to write for a newspaper and it’s pretty hard work.
It can’t be state sponsored, due to the conflict of interest. If the state pays for the media you couldn’t trust the media to accurately report on the state.
Honestly, in good faith, wondering what the other options would be.
Using the propaganda model… news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).
Maybe this is just I dream I had but wasn’t there some kind of regulation at one point that said news orgs (or departments) couldn’t make a profit?
It was a dream. But a good one. Until we manage to go full communism someone will have to make something for their time and effort in order to live. But if we broke up most of the media. And put strict regulation against publicly owned companies owning or trying to pass themselves as anything relating to news. It would be a good start. Stuff being privately owned does not automatically make it more factual. But at least an owner might have a reputation that they could value. When it comes to publicly owned companies. Where the bottom line is profit. Truth and factuality are the first things sacrificed.
