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Comment by mythrwy | Hacker News Reader

So "free" as in "paid for by some interest". (Because after all, publishing isn't free).

The Internet on the other hand is actually much more "free" as far as that goes. The necessary role, and indeed the actual freedom, of the "free press" (in the traditional sense) in this democracy is in my opinion much overstated.

We need rights, methods and opportunity to distribute information in a free society, very true (which Silicon Valley has given us on a level paper never could). But what is really of very little use are media conglomerates shoveling unified propaganda.

I don't sympathize much with NYT's hand-wringing.

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>"So "free" as in "paid for by some interest". (Because after all, publishing isn't free)."

You don't seem to understand how the news media actually works. The New York Times is paid for by advertisements and subscriptions. The New York Times doesn't take money from special interest groups. There is no K Street lobby for Newspapers. You seem very uninformed.

>"The necessary role, and indeed the actual freedom, of the "free press" (in the traditional sense) in this democracy is in my opinion much overstated."

You don't seem to actually understand what the word "free" means in the context of "free press." "Freedom of the Press" is established in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

It allows the press freedom to publish any news they see fit without interference from the State. It allows the the press to publish news without fear of retribution or censorship.

The whole point in "Freedom of the press" is that it allows citizens to be informed in the case their government ever decided to grant themselves power that the people had not consented to grant them.

If you actually believe this is overstated or don't believe having that ability is essential to a functional democracy then you probably should spend some time reading a book or two about Civics. You also might want to look at the media. Or you could look at the current state of News media and democracy in places like Turkey, Russia or the Philippines.

"You don't seem to understand how the news media actually works. The New York Times is paid for by advertisements and subscriptions.... Doesn't take money from special interest.."

No I understand very well. Perhaps it is you who have not been paying attention.

https://medium.com/@Cernovich/pesos-for-play-how-a-mexican-r...

I don't disagree with much of the rest of your post. The same protections that apply to newspapers apply to the Internet. However it's more difficult to present a more unified propaganda front (such as Iraq war rah rah from all major media some years ago) in the more distributed framework.

"The whole point in "Freedom of the press" is that it allows citizens to be informed in case their government ever decided to grant themselves power that the people had not consented to grant them."

That may be the intent. But when we see unified propaganda fronts (such as Iraq, Russia or Syria issues) it becomes apparent this has failed in the case of old media and thus it is no protection at all against the above.

>"No I understand very well. Perhaps it is you who have not been paying attention."

It doesn't sound like you understand what you are talking about at all honestly.

Carlos Slim is just an investor who bought publicly traded stock class A NYT Stock. The New York Times has a dual sock structure and class A has no voting right. Carlos Slim also doesn't have a seat on the board of directors either. Your assertion the NYTimes is pushing Carlos Slim's agenda is completely absurd. That flimsy Medium post you linked to seems to omit these facts. So I will outline them here with citations:

The New York Time is controlled by the the Ochs-Sulzberger family dynasty and has been and has been since the end of the 19th century.

Ownership of the NY TImes:

"In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought The New York Times, a money-losing newspaper, and formed the New York Times Company. The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' newspaper dynasties, has owned The New York Times ever since.[36] The publisher went public on January 14, 1969, trading at $42 a share on the American Stock Exchange.[83] After this, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B voting shares. Class A shareholders are permitted restrictive voting rights while Class B shareholders are allowed open voting rights.

The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company's class B shares." [1]

"Slim has bought large quantities of the company's Class A shares, which are available for purchase by the public and offer less control over the company than Class B shares, which are privately held.[2]

And an actual member of Sulzberger family is still the publisher:

http://fortune.com/2016/10/19/sulzberger-nyt/

That medium post you linked is pretty shoddy and not quality journalism. It also contains zero citations for any of the the figures it throws around. Perhaps you should learn to read more critically.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times

"It doesn't sound like you understand what you are talking about at all honestly."

And to me it sounds like you just want to argue while deliberately (or otherwise) missing the substance of the point. May I suggest while doing so that you drop the rudeness? It does you no favors and appears to be somewhat of a pattern. If you can't discuss without calling others stupid maybe you shouldn't be discussing until you are in the right frame of mind.

I'm well aware Carlos Slim is an investor. Thank you for the history lesson, you are very good at looking things up. This in no way negates my original point which you either are ignoring or fail to grasp. In which case I apologize for my failure of communication.

Just to clarify on my own position a bit, I don't think freedom of the press or freedom of speech are overrated at all, I think the institutions themselves are overrated and run by corrupt people. The freedoms themselves are essential - without them, it would be corrupt people with an absolute monopoly on the media.

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