[ayngg]

Trust can't really be gained as easily as it is lost, at this point I am skeptical there is a real (nice) solution available and the only path is for these institutions to continue to further dig themselves into their hole until there is no trust left to erode.

We have to remember that the media is like this because this is apparently what people want to consume. The old, traditional way is not one that will keep the bills paid. The incentives are all out of alignment with no obvious way to fix them.

I think the worst part of this is the authoritarian tendencies that are creeping in as people try to maintain a guise of being trustworthy as others begin to look for "trust" elsewhere.

[fallingknife]

It's also that the internet broke the local monopolies of the newspapers. It used to be that the newspapers could say to the politicians "if you want to reach the voters in our city, you have to answer questions from our journalists." But now it's more like the politicians can say "unless you put out the coverage we want, you have to provide the coverage we want. Otherwise we will not talk to your organization and people will get their news elsewhere."

[seg_lol]

Damn you Craig!

Seriously, the 4th branch was ultimately funded by ads in the local paper. That shifted faster then they could keep up and the rug got pulled out from under them. And it has flipped politics on its head. It was never stable in the first place.

[luckylion]

> We have to remember that the media is like this because this is apparently what people want to consume.

But their audience is decreasing, so I'm not sure that it's actually what people want. It seems to me that it's more of a "cashing in" thing. They built up trust for generations by mostly reporting factually with little bias, and the current generation is cashing in by abusing that trust to advance their personal politics (short-sighted as that may be), support "the system" (conspiracy!), or both.

[ayngg]

I feel like the audience has been decreasing for decades, and the current state of how news is reported is sort of an attempted pivot in reporting style meant to emulate social media which has been eating their lunch. Clickbait headlines and partisanship/ bias fuel a type of engagement that seems to be much more lucrative than what they did before. In terms of cashing in, I do believe it is something that they are doing to survive.