12/7 - Terrorist attack

[Belsnickel]

(12-17-2021, 02:52 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: This is true, but it easily solved by just reporting facts and letting people make up their own minds based on those facts.  The minute you get into the skewing the facts or the presentation of facts game you start the process of no longer being a real news organization.

While I agree with you in theory, let's keep in mind that people don't want the facts. The majority of "news" consumed in this country is profit driven. It is corporate owned and filled with advertisements. They are not selling the news, they are selling the viewers/readers just as social media sites are doing. They are selling us to advertisers. In order to do that, they need consumers of their media. Just look at ratings of Fox, CNN, MSNBC compared to C-Span or PBS NewsHour. Compare listenership of NPR news to one of the corporate ones out there (I don't even know who they are, anymore) or compared to the podcasts the claim to be news. Compare readership of NY Post, WSJ, NY Times, Washington Post, etc., online or print, to something like the websites of the wire agencies like AP and Reuters.

The non-corporate examples aren't even strictly fact-based, there is some flavor in their product, but even with that they don't draw the same audience because that is not what people actually want. If the people don't want it then these companies producing their news for profits aren't going to make any changes.

I don't like a government run media because the media should be adversarial to the state. But profit driven media will always be highly editorialized because of the need to sell eyes to their advertisers.