[mcguire]

Are you saying that an advertiser deciding not to feed the hand that bites it (wait, that didn't work out right) is somehow the same as institutional employee abuse?

Every newspaper, every news magazine has had this same tension between the advertising department and the content department. Every advertiser should understand that; every editor certainly does. This isn't new.

[lobotryas]

The fact that this isn't new doesn't mean we have to condone it.

If we do (or are) then all a large corporation has to do to stifle most MSM criticism is to push enough money into advertising with those platforms. Of course we already have cases in this area [1], but hopefully the proposition as a whole sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/new-ameri...

[mcguire]

No one condones it.

However, the solution that was well developed in the 20th century, the "iron curtain" between the advertising and news departments of a publication, worked reasonably well (with editors being put into difficult positions periodically, though). Up until, that is, advertising dollars for news publications dried up almost entirely, creating an existential threat to the news organization.

Now, we are back in the pre-20th century world, where every publication is owned and published by someone with a particular viewpoint.