We've belatedly come to realise that 'the news' is not the neutral reporting of events but rather the manufacture of information products for commercial or political gain, most preferably for the oligarchical media owners, both. We need a new revenue model, new ownership model of news media, before we can trust again what has been piped into our eyes and ears
Darryl Cooper spoke about this in an earlier episode of The Unraveling[1]. The thesis of the episode was something along the lines of "If you pull the thread behind "honest journalism", you'll find that the US has been cultured to being told what to think since the days of Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite."
When we consider the current state of journalism we should check the presupposition that we ever had a "free and functional press". I can't remember a time, nor can I find evidence, that it ever truly existed without some sort of circumstantial asterisks polluting the results.
Walter Cronkite came closer to "the truth" than modern "journalism" does. He wasn't perfect, he had his own narrative, but he believed in objectivity, and he tried to reach it. He may have failed, but by trying, he came closer to reaching it than the current generation.
There was a managing editor of the New York Times. He knew that his reporters leaned somewhat left, so he steered the editorial slant of the paper somewhat right to balance. They literally put "He kept the paper straight" on his tombstone. Today the Times comes rather short of that standard.
Broad consumer sentiment lags reality by a decade or thereabouts. We're seeing people wise up to changes that happened in the journalism profession in the late '00s and early 10s.
We've belatedly come to realise that 'the news' is not the neutral reporting of events but rather the manufacture of information products for commercial or political gain, most preferably for the oligarchical media owners, both. We need a new revenue model, new ownership model of news media, before we can trust again what has been piped into our eyes and ears