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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> No matter which side you stand on the democracy-requires-a-free-and-vigorous-press proposition, we’re about to test it.

As the article itself notes, nothing about this has really fundamentally changed in decades. We're long past the collapse of the news industry, and it turns out we still have a free and vigorous press. It's just not very good. We didn't lose news, what we lost was editorial oversight, basic ethics, fact checking, the pursuit of an objective voice, the resources to do good work, the courage to stand on principles, and so on. We got garbage clickbait websites and a readership both underinformed and oversaturated by news. Freedom and vigor are not at risk. Rats are free and vigorous, and rats thrive on garbage and will survive in any environment.

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> We didn't lose news, what we lost was editorial oversight, basic ethics, fact checking, the pursuit of an objective voice, the resources to do good work, the courage to stand on principles, and so on

If there was any of those in the press, ever, they wouldnt have lied about nonexistent WMDs for 8+ years.

The entire privately owned 'free' press was just the corporate propaganda arm of the establishment. The illusion of 'quality' was there only because the 'editorial oversight' that you mention was keeping the 'undesirable' news out and 'desirable' ones in, creating a facade of consistency. The moment the Internet broke the blockade, things came crashing down within a span of years.

Can we really blame loss of objectivity on the loss of the business model? The NY Times is doing fine and they totally threw out objectivity as a goal. Seems more like a cultural shift to me.

It might help the discussion to distinguish editorial stance from editorial oversight. You could have a news source that is well managed yet highly partisan.

Some people respond to complaints about modern trashy journalism by referencing examples from the early 19th century that are at least as bad as anything today. I think what we see over history is that the mid-20th century was a high-water mark for the "appearance" of objectivity in journalism. When I look at reportage of specific cases, I'm not so sure of the actual objectivity.

> they totally threw out objectivity as a goal.

Seems a bit hyperbolic. Could you share some examples of that? Not from the opinion pages, but from the news section?

I have no horse in this race, just delivering something Russian journalist noticed. When major newspapers talk about war in Ukraine, they often cite Russian government regarding things like losses or recruitment. But there are plenty people who track these things (Russian BBC service and team called CIT) and numbers totally won't match. Like 3-5x times different. But NY times often won't even say this. They just tell numbers from Russian government like they are true. This is very sloppy and likely advancing some internal agenda.

What would qualify as an example here? A news article with a bias isn't proof that objectivity isn't still a goal, and by this definition studies of media bias wouldn't be evidence either.

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