[Scape]

24 hour digital news watered down the content. When we allowed robber barons like Conrad black buy up all the newspapers and fire the staff that's what really ruined the journalism economy in Canada.

Monopolies only purpose is to serve the owners, not the consumers. Democracy can not exist without a free press.

[Thanos]

We're pretty much in the first years of a post-democracy situation. The ongoing decline of the press, both the professional and amateur components, is just one of the many features of the new era. The old ideals are probably not going to survive what's already happened and that which is still happening. In reality we've probably been living in a myth for far too long, thinking that the "hard-charging & crusading reporter" in the movies & TV shows has been the rule in that profession when in actuality it's most likely always been the exception. The press is what it is, and just like every other profession & industry it's just a job for the majority of the people working in it.

Keep in mind that the lament of the literary & journalistic elite by the 1970's was that television, which could have been the greatest instrument ever devised to promote education & the free flow of information to an engaged & intelligent populace, had instead become a bastion of retarded sitcoms, hokey family dramas, and all sort of brain-cell destroying pap that was obviously making the viewers stupider instead of smarter. The exact same phenomena occurred, and is still occurring with the internet, especially the social media portion of it. The internet is awesome at creating new wealth for those creative/cunning enough to understand how to monetize it to it's maximum potential. Other than that all most all the other effects of the internet have been massively negative, especially socially. Increased tribalization, extreme polarization, endless corners for the very worst people among us to congregate & scheme, promoting the worst sort of filth that people (especially children) are endlessly exposed to, and (just like television) really making far too many people that much distracted & dumber than they were before they had a computer in each home and a smart phone in each hand.

There's a probability that the human brain just isn't equipped to handle & process visual media when it's presented in a simultaneous-gratification & feed-me-more format. The increase in clamouring voices shouting, especially the ideological operatives pushing an agenda, isn't an improvement. It's actually quite overwhelming, like if the population of an insane asylum was quadrupled overnight - there's no way the inmates would be able to emotionally & mentally handle the wild increase in stress.

There's probably no way to return to the ideal(ized) age of a great press. The technology keeps changing too quickly and the ones making money off of the changes aren't going to back off so everyone can catch their breath. I offer no suggestions for improvement because the situation is too fluid to ever predict. All I can say is what I've been saying all along and that is to be careful & aware of the nature of those who are doing the talking. Why they're doing what they do & how they're doing it is fairly important to know because it's the best way to find out what kind of path their want their followers & believers to take.

[herbie]

Hard to avoid corporate bias when your revenue comes from advertising.
Used to have a column in a local rag, couldn't criticize the town or council as their ads were 76% of it's revenue....
now we have nice sucky, cheerleading Facebook back patters online.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

Like I said before, read up on the French Revolution and the role the revolutionary press of "citizen journalists" played in setting off a perpetual-motion machine of a murderous bloodbath with their incessant slander and demonization of their social enemies, where justice & law had fled the scene altogether and baseless accusation ruled every moment. It's pretty much an exact cut-and-paste job to what's going on today in extremist circles. All it's missing is the blood clogging the gutters and the severed heads, but the way things are going (especially in the US) it's really only a matter of time until the real atrocities happen.

I don't disagree, particularly about the purity spiral that led the revolutionaries to start guillotining each other for not being "pure" enough (something which is happening less-lethally in far-left and far-right political circles today) but Joseph Pulitizer and William Randolph Hearst's competition for newspaper sales led critics to coin the term "yellow journalism" for their sensastionalistic headlines. 19th-century Canada was rife with politicians, including the Fathers of Confederation and their opponents, using newspapers to advocate for their political goals and projects. Today we have the likes of the Broadbent Institute or the Manning Centre for Building Democracy closely affiliated with various political parties.

That said, print media and TV shows did not have the capacity for instant responses and speaking directly to politicians, actors, etc. that we do today. The real problem with social media may simply be the sheer volume of crap that gets produced, with the loudest voices getting an disproportionate amount of attention and making everyone who could be associated with them look bad.

[Zipperfish]

I have no patience for the news networks. They are basically propaganda machines, FOX for the Republicans and Trumpists, CNN for the laissez-faire Democrats. The CBC is basically a "Sunny Ways" Liberal tool.

Myself, I like the Guardian as they are the only ones even remotely trying to document the fraying of civilization from COVID, climate change, resurgent autocracies and the US imploding with toxic politics.

[herbie]

I like the "bias" where they report the news and don't bring on some corporate apologist claiming to represent consumers.
Like the guy from GasBuddy, the Taxpayers Federation, etc.

Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Global, CTV don't have the GUTS to even air "Marketplace" or "Nature of Things".
PBS struggles to do shows like that from individual sponsors.

[Thanos]

Shows like 60 Minutes do those stories all the time in the US. Ones like 20/20 used to do them too, until they decided that white-girl-murdered story of the week was going to be their main focus going forward.

There's lots of great journalism in the US. It takes effort to look it up though. It's not something that's available at the flick of a TV remote anymore unfortunately.

[herbie]

Not buying the story that shows like 60 minutes and Walter Cronkite made the USA lose VietNam?
Used to watch both years ago, but just like you pointed out they became less and less relevant.
Shit I finally got to watch Don't Look Up and couldn't stop laughing. Hosts that won't fucking shut up and miss the stories altogether....