Left-Wing Media Is Ruining My High School

[Benton]

(01-21-2019, 05:39 PM)treee Wrote: We gotta figure out a way to fix it. Journalism is a necessity for a democracy to function correctly.

News agencies over the last 40 years, like most businesses, have drifted towards corporate ownership. Even ones that aren't still have to make a buck. And therein lies the problem.

Journalism is largely paid for through advertising, and the bigger your audience, the bigger the dollars. That problem is compounded by the current business approach of 'maximize short-term profits, don't worry about long-term gains' which has decimated news rooms and made far inferior products.

(01-21-2019, 06:02 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: To be fair, we're no different than any people in this regard.  We consume different things, but the bread and circuses is a universal constant.


I completely agree.  A good way to start would be to enact what I've suggested before on this board, eliminate the editorial section from hard news locations.  Also, eliminate editorialism from hard news stories.  Opinion and fact are not interchangeable, however in the current news format they are inextricably linked. 

I don't disagree that this would help, but only with people who don't understand the difference and only in a minor way. There's still going to be some folks who word things with bias, and even more who think everyone does. No matter how impartial a story, there's always going to be someone who thinks without an open mind.

Quote: Another way to do this would be to be more concerned with being correct than being first.  We've discussed this here before as well, but the proliferation of "news" options has damaged the journalism profession.  As ad revenue falls they are desperate to generate money, and their reporting has suffered commensurately.  Even formerly prestigious, and borderline unimpeachable, sources such as the NYT have fallen prey to this.


Perhaps the most damage was inflicted by how the news media responds to Trump.  He lambasted them and they took it personally.  It shows in the stories they run on him and the tone they are presented.  Ironically, they've become much more as Trump portrays them in their reaction to him then they ever did prior.

That's a big part of it, and part of the problem with reduced news rooms. At the small 14 person paper I started at, no story went out without having three reads and the editor would call and question anything that didn't sound right or plausible. When I left that paper, corporate layoffs had reduced the staff to five and things generally got one read.