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Comment by xxxtentachyon | Hacker News Reader

I think I can take it as an axiom that in order for a democracy to function well, the people in it need to know what's going on both domestically and abroad. Who do you suppose should go out and find and publish needed information? If your answer isn't "journalists", then what separates those people from journalists?

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Semantics aside, I'm off the opinion that competition and oversight from the internet in the news arena is an overall good thing.

Of course we need journalists, but it's just as good that we have some independent fact checkers that also have a platform to stand on.

And it's not like the network journalists have done anything to earn our trust recently.

In this case, the complete and correct information was provided by some random people on Reddit, not "journalists".

And one answer to your second question could be: money. Professionals need to generate (exactly) 60 minutes of news every night (minus time for commercials), and have it be entertaining enough to get people to watch (so they can sell more commercials). Amateurs providing random facts on the internet are not dependent on other corporations to generate income, or daily TV/newspaper deadlines.

Thought experiment: if we didn't have a profession called "journalism" today, and free worldwide publishing already existed (i.e., the internet), would we wish that they existed? Would people be saying "For the sake of our democracy, we need to pay these random Reddit fact checkers a good salary"?

As it turns out, journalists aren’t immune to subconscious bias, incompetence, and plain old bribes. So what’s the difference between journalists and me? I agree that it’s a dirty job and someone’s gotta do it, but journalists aren’t the answer.

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