Analysis reporting (making educated guesses and telling stories) has valuable functions. It "shakes trees" in the sense that sources sometimes come forward to confirm or deny an analysis. It promotes skepticism by providing alternative to controlled press releases and controlled leaks. It also is a dog in the fight to influence the "commonly accepted narrative" of events - the interpretations about the uncertain aspects of reality that dominate our collective response to the present and near future.
If you eliminate all of these functions and just let a few official sources fill the news-hole, it is not as though non-objective analysis will disappear. Far from it. Instead, all non-objective but authoritative-sounding analysis will come only from those with the greatest economic and political power. In short, you will have a fascist propaganda machine.
(There is constant rebellion against the tendency of the press to enrich its pockets by turning away from the wild speculation and radical analysis. Uh... Hunter Thompson was one symptom of that rebellion a few years back. More recently, I suppose that the "right wing talk radio" crowd is another symptom of the same tendency to rebel against simply receiving truths and their interpretation from the powers that be. Tech is a microcosm different in topic, not kind from the general field of national news reporting: people fight over which facts to highlight and how to interpret them. Some reporters are supposed to be in there slugging it out.)
If you eliminate all of these functions and just let a few official sources fill the news-hole, it is not as though non-objective analysis will disappear. Far from it. Instead, all non-objective but authoritative-sounding analysis will come only from those with the greatest economic and political power. In short, you will have a fascist propaganda machine.
(There is constant rebellion against the tendency of the press to enrich its pockets by turning away from the wild speculation and radical analysis. Uh... Hunter Thompson was one symptom of that rebellion a few years back. More recently, I suppose that the "right wing talk radio" crowd is another symptom of the same tendency to rebel against simply receiving truths and their interpretation from the powers that be. Tech is a microcosm different in topic, not kind from the general field of national news reporting: people fight over which facts to highlight and how to interpret them. Some reporters are supposed to be in there slugging it out.)