[goodbyesf]

> Definitely a demand issue.

This is simply not true. There is no demand. That's why the news industry forced google, youtube, facebook, etc to push their product all over their platforms. The news industry literally got government to force tech companies to peddle their noxious product.

> To me, the only plausible shift to more fact-based and balanced coverage happens via subsidies -- the government has to insert itself into the market and put its thumb on the scale.

This has got to be the dumbest or the most naive thing I've read in a while. If you get government involved, then you'd get garbage statist propaganda. Also it would really put a dent on the false myth about journalists 'holding power to account' when they are paid by the government.

> The media did a yeoman-like job of fact-checking Trump every day

The media that created the Trump brand, the media that gave him 24/7 free publicity, the media that got him elected, etc? That's the media you are praising?

> do something that would have this kind of positive societal leverage

The problem in society is news. More news or more government funded news is not the answer.

[dns_snek]

> This has got to be the dumbest or the most naive thing I've read in a while. If you get government involved, then you'd get garbage statist propaganda. Also it would really put a dent on the false myth about journalists 'holding power to account' when they are paid by the government.

As opposed to being paid directly by the people they're supposed to hold accountable?

Government-funded media would at least have a fighting chance of being neutral, checks and balances and all. By all accounts the US justice system is corrupt as well, but it would obviously be orders of magnitude worse if you outsourced it to private corporations.

[zerbinxx]

I’m not sure about this, but I think there’s a pretty good and absolutely foregone conclusion that the world is actually extremely fucked up in new ways, growing in metastatic ugliness every year, and that it really is this Bad News that people are turned off by.

To me this seems like one of those “reality has a liberal bias” or “the positive aspects of negative thinking” - mainly that education and intellect are anticorrelated with happiness, that there are very few happy and informed people.

I’m not a news guy or a liberal but I think there’s a lot of ink being spilled over a phenomenon that could be explained simply by: the world is a very fucked up place and people are getting tired of hearing about it.

[carbine]

I don't think this is necessarily true -- if you limit your sources to "good" ones (thoughtful, reliable, with minimal political agenda -- I'd include the economist and a handful of substack writers in this mix) then you can be informed without needing to expose yourself to the awful deluge of mainstream crap. So maybe you can be somewhat happy (if your definition of happiness depends upon you not being engaged in the culture war), but still informed and intelligent.

The problem, however, is the impact this change in political reporting has on actual politics. That, I'm not sure how to solve.

It used to be that pre-election debates were for nerds and policy wonks. Now everyone watches them, but all substance has been removed. Debates themselves may even cease to exist.

[musicale]

The world isn't without problems, but certain things (life expectancy, income, education, literacy, etc.) got a lot better after the industrial revolution.

https://ourworldindata.org/breaking-the-malthusian-trap

[throw0101b]

> This is simply not true. There is no demand. That's why the news industry forced google, youtube, facebook, etc to push their product all over their platforms.

The product was already being produced pre-Internet, pre-television, pre-radio:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

A new distribution medium didn't cause it to be created.