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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

In the wise words of Martin Shkreli, who sounds even wiser from jail..

The web media layoffs remind us that there is no money in virtue signaling. Major media will get back to real news. The ‘fakeout’ caused by companies like Vice and Buzzfeed will retract and the CBS/ABC/NBCs of the world will realize ‘woke’ culture and uber-progressivism won’t pay the bills. People want the news, not preaching. Companies like Buzzfeed (hungry for a merger) are still upside down on cost structure and will go bankrupt. Startups, such as Gawker’s latest iteration, actually have a risk of imploding on their own smug, before they prove they’re not viable businesses, either. More 20-somethings will realize that their calling of ‘speaking truth to power’ (by trying to usurp power itself) is a distant second to operating profit. No operating profit, no whining about the benefits of socialism, sorry.

reference: http://martinshkreli.com/uncategorized/1-26-2019/

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I actually think Martin Shkreli is right to a degree. A business has to profit to be successful but not necessarily profit by any means necessary. As this can be a short sighted strategy.

The reality is that these news outlets abandoned their stakeholders and instead decided to push an agenda for a myopic few. The reality is that these news outlets should be seeking truth and not pushing an agenda. Truth will always build you wider coalition and thus profits will ensue.

Why is this being down voted? Do people think that unbiased news is a bad thing or something? That these news outlets should have progressive convictions in everything they make?

Sure they can exist, but they shouldn't occupy the entire mainstream landscape unless the entire population is on board with those convictions.

Because it's a pointless comment. Fox "News" is the leading provider of television news in the United States by a wide margin. They have a widely conservative bent and one of their anchors has nightly talks with the President.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-networ...

The claim that news can be unbiased is silly as all news has to be reported through a lens. The claim that news media has a "liberal bias" is a long standing conservative talking point going back to the 1970s where news media was listed as slightly liberal and then everyone ignored the follow that showed that media had self corrected based on the report.

Claiming that there's a "liberal news problem" just points out that conservatives don't like that "their President" is getting "unfairly attacked" by the media. This completely ignores that conservative media frequently runs literal conspiracy theories that have led to real life shootings with little regard to the outcome.

The point being that claiming that there's some grand liberal conspiracy ignores the fact that most of the news organizations OP cited will actually issue corrections. Fox news rarely issues them and most other mainstream conservative commentators never do because they claim they are "infotainment".

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