Have worked in newpsapers. Can confirm the "Journalism is sacred" attitude, accompanied by a "we don't need to think of the economics or the reader - we write what we (i.e. other journalists) think is good copy, and someone needs to pay us for doing that" attitude.

The stupid thing is, though, that they're right. Our democracies need investigative journalism to survive, or we get what we're seeing now - corrupt politicians looting the public coffers. What has happened in the UK over the last ten years would not have happened back in the 90's, not because politicians were better people back then, but because the journalists would have had a field day reporting on their shenanigans.

You can't have this paid for by taxes. The BBC in the UK, and the ABC in Australia, have both been suspiciously quiet about government shenanigans and have generally not rocked the boat, which desperately needed rocking at times. There's just too much weight behind the never-spoken-out-loud threat of revoking the charter if the boat gets rocked too much.

We're seeing news organisations funded by billionaires, but they do interfere editorially, and we know that, and more importantly the politicians know that. Billionaires can be leant on to stop investigative journalists from doing their thing.

It needs to be funded by the readers. But the readers are reluctant to pay for this (as TFA says). It's a conundrum, but we need to sort it out soon.