Hacker News Reader

Comment by akulbe | Hacker News Reader

What makes his buying WaPo evil? Seriously. At all. Anything?

There's nothing particularly evil about Bezos buying the WP, but it's another step in my long-held belief that all of the major traditional news organs will be controlled by people who make their money elsewhere.

That might actually be better for said news organs.

I think that's a better alternative than having traditional news organs being controlled by people who make their money from those news organs.

(I would argue the best alternative is ownership by individuals/organizations who have no financial stake whatsoever in journalism.)

Excellent point. There is another category of bad owners too, state owned. I'd almost prefer that to the square metre of adverts per story that the local rag produces though.

State controlled media is certainly bad, but that is not implied by state ownership. In my experience state owned organisations provide better quality journalism than their commercial counterparts, and the gap is widening as commercial media race each other to the bottom.

Perhaps better than mainstream, ad-supported commercial counter, but that's hardly the gold standard. "Not as terrible as those who go whoring for ad dollars" isn't a ringing endorsement.

State-funded is not terribly far off, either: if funding depends to any real degree on the political climate, then the conflicts are unavoidable.

The line between state-owned and state-controlled is incredibly thin, and is only one catastrophe away from being wiped out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com