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Comment by viburnum | Hacker News Reader

A good solution would be if the news media wasn’t owned by billionaires.

Actually, in this case Bezos has shown a resistance to corrupt influence BECAUSE he's a billionaire. (I'm not disputing the list of corrupting influences DUE to being a billionaire, just pointing out this particular case may have the opposite)

Having a larger number of respected media outlets could help. Having news and money separated is great, but hard to implement. (patches welcome!) . Having media outlets that no individual or small group can control, regardless of their money, also good but tricky.

Meh. I mean sure, Bezos has been a different media owner than Rupert Murdoch, but in the end, the WaPo enforces the neoliberal order, with some sprinkling of liberal concern to re-assure people that yes, humanist concerns are important. But you won't find an editorial line that challenges capitalism, or wanton CO2 emissions which will rapidly kill our planet.

Or Amazon, for that matter. Not an unimportant factor considering Bezos' position atop the pyramid...

You might find this tweet thread interesting about a large list of 'anti-interesting' stories. Stories that have been conspicuously ignored by the corporate media.

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/122017967080239513...

How would that solve anything? Millionaires, and even mere thousandaires, have smartphones too nowadays which could contain information an attacker might find useful to try to influence them.

Whats the difference? If MBS wanted to, he would attack the owner of <non billionaire news agency> anyway.

I think bezos owning WaPo is actually good since he isn't meddling with the coverage, and he can ensure that WaPo stays resilient if it gets sued many times.

The problem of "access" is an insidious one, even for independent journalism that isn't beholden to corporate advertisers. Ask too many hard-hitting questions, and you don't get invited back for the next interview.

What I think you’re meaning to say is that if news was actually journalism as opposed to clearly dictated by a small number of powerful people, that we could still trust the news despite possible hacks.

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