I started to notice some people posting NYT, Bloomberg or other websites with hard paywalls, that leads to people in the comments that are unable to read the article to discuess the headline without any analysis and some times spreading misinformation, which cannot be countered by the article, due to the paywall.
Which bring me to this: Why does no one thought about blocking hard paywalled articles for the sake of quality of discussion?
Thank you. It really bothers me that there are so many people who expect journalism to fall from trees, or even that they’re somehow owed it.
The situation for the last 20 years - the internet free-for-all with plunging ad revenues and spotty quality - is a historic anomaly. Before that it was normal to pay for journalism, and masses of people did. Seems we’re slowly moving back to that model and it’s not a moment too soon.
That said, there have always been free sources of non-billionaire-controlled news in the form of state broadcasters like PBS, BBC, CBC. In mainland Europe there are several that publish in English, including DW, France24, Der Spiegel. They have their biases, of course, but they employ professional journalists who take their jobs seriously. And there are more and more nonprofit publishers too: ProPublica and The Guardian spring to mind but there are a ton of specialist outlets too, financed by readers or philanthropic foundations.
To be fair, state controlled (or state financed) media has its own set of problems, depending on the country and historic period, and things can change fast with certain governments.
Sure. But apparently subtle differences are in fact important. For example, RAI, the Italian broadcaster, is traditionally kept on a tight leash by the government, and everyone in Italy understands that. The BBC by contrast is almost completely independent due to its unusual setup involving a charter. PBS is partly accountable to its audience directly because it begs them for donations. Russian state TV is obviously just the propaganda arm of the Kremlin. Where the money comes from is important but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
For sure, but even the BBC has been under heavy criticism lately for some bias.
The BBC has always been under heavy criticism for bias, it’s inevitable given its role. But the point is that the bias is not structural: its journalists are not worried about losing their jobs if they offend the government or a billionaire owner. The BBC’s bias is the sum of the biases of the journalists, who tend to come from a certain section of society and see the world in certain predictable way. It’s quite hard to address that.
Time for “Journalism Dollars”? Similar to Democracy Dollars.
You get X amount of money that you can distribute to news sources however you choose, if you don’t do anything with it, it jist goes to PBS and NPR.
Vouchers, basically, as some countries (Sweden is one) do for schools. A pretty good idea IMO.