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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Now we have two (more) major newsoutlets owned by activist owners --WaPo and Time Mag.

Wish there were more independence in the media. Or at least fewer owners who will push agendas. Time will tell.

You’re counting Jeff Bezos as an activist but not Rupert Murdoch? That makes no sense. Most of his media conglomerate is openly political all the time (Fox News, New York Post, The Sun etc.) while some maintains a pretense of objectivity (Wall Street Journal).

They are all problematic, but an additional issue is that Conservative views tend to be labeled such more then Progressive views get labeled such -so the presentation is that Progressive views are more "normal" than conservative views. As in your post, you're implying that most of Murdoch's outlets are politically biased but make no implication about progressive outlets.

I like the British media, because they don't pretend to be impartial. Impartiality is impossible, so it's better to be honest about that fact than to pretend to be impartial as the American media does.

On the other hand the state sponsored one forces you to pay an involuntary fee and it is not all that balanced a source.

It's hardly involuntary. No one's holding a gun to your head to own a TV receiver.

So you buy a receiver will never watch the channel, yet you must pay whether or not you even agree with their programming and somehow that is voluntary excise? It's strongarming.

There are plenty of things my government does (like invade Iraq or charge zero dollars for mineral rights) that I am forced to pay for. Cry me a river.

Presumably, at least, you can vote your gov out, PM, MPs --can you vote away that tax?

I am not quite familiar with the UK's parliamentary system but, I would assume you can lobby your representatives to eliminate the tax. So, yes, you can vote the tax away. I would be greatly surprised if folks can vote on Brexit but not a simple tax.

It rides on a Comms act of 2003? So it would be more difficult to have overturned than voting out your MP or Party (PM).

You don't need to pay if it isn't configured. My TV is not set up to watch live broadcasts as I only use it for gaming and I've never had to pay for the TV License.

If you are going to be incensed about something get your facts straight.

What percent of your income was the TV tax? Be honest.

Does it matter? It's still money taken by force.

That's how all taxes work??

Yes, and that's what taxes are: money taken by force.

This position is not indefensible but it is hard to defend: it implies that you could not possibly construct a state of comparable complexity to modern governance if the topmost layer were a libertarian paradise. But that position is very implausible. If you can construct a model of a state then you can easily analogize to whatever that is, instead of theft.

I'll pay a fee all day to have some fraction of the population getting less of their news from the Daily Mail etc.

Let's triple the fee and get some state newspapers and advertising.

What if the BBC's politics (ie where it advertises all its jobs) were aligned with the Mail rather than the Graun? Would you still be so keen, or would you be among those calling for it to be abolished?

Abolished but it's never going to get close to being that gross.

They'll have plenty of spin and perspective that I disagree with but the rest of our media is absolutely festering. Anything that isn't owned by an 80 year old billionaire is welcome to me. They simply can't be any worse.

The rest of this thread is a sad excuse of analysis of the problems with the Koch family, but I just want to say it's not worth pretending the BBC isn't just as bad as the equivalent here, which would be NPR, (so don't go trying to compare it to fox or MSNBC) and I've heard plenty of criticism of British media doing exactly what you say they don't, from one of my favorite and one of the best journalists, Robert Fisk.

What about the BBC is openly impartial?

Has WaPo's "activist" owner had any real impact on what they choose to cover?

We don't truly know because we don't/can't/won't know all the stories that WaPo killed because of influence. However, worrying about stories being "killed" is the wrong way to think of the potentially nefarious effects. The much more common problem, and much harder to detect, are knowing the stories that the WaPo (or any news org) just didn't put priority into pursuing because of institutional inertia and unspoken rules.

If WaPo had a reporter/editor who specialized in particular zealous investigations into Amazon, we would likely hear murmurs and off-the-record complaints about how WaPo has been going unexpectedly soft on Amazon post-acquisition. In contrast, there is no possibility of knowing how the average Wapo tech reporter would have covered Amazon in an alternate universe in 2017.

I'm not sure what the parent's conclusion is, but AFAICT they are saying that there is no evidence of activism/bias. (I assume we are excluding opinion pages, which are supposed to be biased.)

I don't agree with the general point that bias is necessarily difficult to detect. For example, with Murdoch there is a large amount of explicit evidence.

Ehh? If WashPo kills a story, the other news outlets would most likely be running those stories.

Lets say WashPo kills a story, why wouldn't Fox News run that story in the headlines? Or New York times? Or Politico, or... any media organization worth a darn?

Not all stories are widely known before they break. For instance, Wapo might not pursue an investigative piece on Amazon as enthusiastically, or another investigation may get prioritised because of the owner.

A story that isn't pursued might not see the light of day. Big stories, like the Weinstein disclosures, are broken after long periods of investigation and journalistic grunt-work. Only after they break do you see all the other news outlets pounce on the story and start reporting it. Historically, Wapo has been an important place for investigative work, they broke the Watergate story.

I think that's more the worry.

> Not all stories are widely known before they break. For instance, Wapo might not pursue an investigative piece on Amazon as enthusiastically, or another investigation may get prioritised because of the owner.

As is true of all Media.

I don't recall any major Fox News articles or pieces on the Sexual Harassment claims of Bill O'Reily. But the story got out, because we have competing media companies in the USA.

That's the benefit of free-market competition. Unfortunately, it also means that whenever one media company sounds the alarm, the readers need to be careful with the evidence.

> But the story got out, because we have competing media companies in the USA.

How long did it take for the Kevin Spacey story to get out even though there were rumours from early 2000. Some stories can remain buried for a very long time.

Free market is not the answer to everything.

Yes. They commonly report negative SpaceX stories, and trashed the hell out of Bernie Sanders during the election, publishing 16 negatives stories in less than a day.

How are those connected to the owner though?

Jeff Bezos owns SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, and was a big Hillary Clinton supporter.

It's still an assumption to connect the paper's content to Bezos though. That he has William Randolph Hearst level control in the WaPo seems like a common conspiracy theory.

It's a fundamental denial of obvious facts to claim that editorial control by the owner of a media outlet is conspiracy theory. There are plenty of well known examples, though most people only acknowledge the ones that are opposite their own political beliefs.

What are the well known examples and the obvious facts connecting Bezos with the editorial direction of the WaPo?

Saying he makes editorial decisions in the newspaper because they printed criticism of Sanders or his competition doesn't cut it for me.

You misunderstood my comment. I'm saying that there are plenty of examples of editorial control by owners, demonstrating that this is not within the realm of conspiracy theory.

A few examples:

Rupert Murdoch

Michael Bloomberg

Andrew Breitbart

Matt Drudge

No matter how direct Bezos influences the WaPo staff: The editors know that publishing bad stories about Amazon is less good for them keeping their job than writing bad about Walmart. And even in are in other areas there is an implicit assumption. Fighting this internally and externally is hard.

If you were working in WAPO, you would think twice about publishing negative stories about Amazon or Bezos.

Weird, these don't strike me as particularly flattering:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/amazon-workers-i...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/stores-hope-deals-ex...

WaPo is an operation mockingbird outlet through and through now, and has no credibility left over from its olden days.

Yikes, really saddened to hear this far-reaching conspiracy claptrap on HN.

Yikes, really sad to see people burying their head in the sand on HN.

Don't be so patronizing.

I think that's what "independence" in the media looks like. The alternative is ownership by massive conglomerates. GE owns NBC, does that make NBC more "independent" than the New York Times (which is owned by the Sulzberger family)?

Media outlets are valuable, thus your options for ownership are 1) very rich individuals or families or 2) large corporations. Which one of those did you want to see more of?

Since 2013, Comcast, not GE, owns NBC.

My bad, good catch.

I thought it was Kabletown...

Honestly it's an unpalatable dilemma, but I'd say I'd prefer a conglomerate which has fewer owner impulses over an owner who has an agenda to drive.

Has there ever been such a thing? Were the newspaper barons of the past neutral?

There's no true neutrality. You always have a bias. The statements "the coin was tossed and shows head" and "tail didn't come up" are both true and correct equally valid description of the same fact. For more complex issues the description is even harder. Especially if you add selection of areas to cover, due to limited space, time and authors.

Only two? Murdoch, Turner ... I'm sure there are many more.

Turner's network didn't turn full on opposition till recently though and he's out of the picture anyway.

HuffPo but she's been at it for a while.

I meant to say major ownership changes to activist owners in the last two years --though there may be some other big ones.

Turner's network was one of the first that has some clear record of proposals to do what it (and most other media) has done today. You might find this hot mic moment [1] interesting.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCUIlV-AKY4

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