I'm not really sure that's true anymore - journalists are the ones obsessing over the links between Donald Trump [1]'s hands and his penis, piss-gate, editing videos for fake fish-food dumping stories, changing the dates on conversations from after to before the election to suit conspiracy theories and then having to apologise when discovered, and other items where a) facts are either not sought or b) outright lies created.

[1] I happen to dislike Donald Trump intensely, but the fact that some people would need to confirm a political stance before willing to accept cases where there is no visible evidence of truth or evidence of outright fabrication indicates those people are part of the problem.

Of course not, but there was a time when most people got their news from sources that at the very least paid lip service to journalistic integrity.

Are you claiming all journalists are corrupt?

"This file may be named image.jpg, but there is no JPEG data in it to be parsed."

"I doubt there was ever a golden age where technology was perfect."

"A very keen observation, this still isn't a JPEG file though."

Skype requires a verbal announcement if used on a broadcast. It does feel weird, but it's the cost of using free software. https://www.skype.com/en/legal/broadcast/

> NPR does this. I don't like it. "... blah blah. For more on this story, Joan Smith joins us via Skype."

This sounds like extremely weak evidence that NPR is getting paid by Microsoft. Maybe they're just saying "via Skype" because the call is, in fact, via Skype, or to explain the poor sound quality?

I lot of people they call likely only have Skype (or similar) and cell at their home. It's unfortunate that phone call quality has actually decreased a lot of the time since 50 years ago. But that's what you give up for dramatically lower costs and mobility.

Skype is far better than when they call from a cell. Ditto with podcasts. I will usually skip the episode if the guest is on a cell.

You really need more evidence before smearing a respected name such as NPR.

Especially if the benign explanation is as believable as it is here: Skype has simply become a word of common usage.

Journalists operate in the real world. They will use brand names to the same extend that evreryone does. Artificially avoiding them would limit their ability to tell stories as much as avoiding words that start with the letter H would.