| > There has to be a model where such manipulative lying doesn't pay off. The more I think about this problem, the less I feel like there's a solution. Ultimately, any news outlet is going to be responsible for whoever is funding it. You can get the Bezos/Soon-Shiong/etc. model, in which the newspaper is treated as a billionaire's philanthropic project, which is problematic in that you've got one person responsible, and if he's not happy he can stop funding it. You can do a broader, crowdsourced/fundraised philanthropy model, but if the newspaper doesn't make content that people like, they're not going to donate. You're almost certainly going to end up with a partisan paper, because you either need donors from the left or donors from the right. You can do the government-funded model, but of course everyone ought to be wary of the government controlling the funding of the news. So... what does that leave? I don't ask that rhetorically - it's something that I've thought a lot about and failed to come to any kind of a useful answer on. The best thing I can come up with is a billionaire (or group of them) endowing a newspaper with a trust that they can't take back and which doesn't allow them to exert control. But then you've still gotta have someone hiring the staff and running the place - who picks those people? I really don't know - it feels like a truly intractable problem. I'm honestly glad for the rise of the Substack/newsletter model - at least there, I know exactly who's responsible for the content and what their biases are. Unfortunately, that's better for political commentary and the like - it's just not a feasible model for breaking actual news. |