[joshe]

10 years ago, I thought it was important have newsrooms reporting on current events. But now it's so schlocky, even on things I agree with them on, that I think they do more harm than good. Really anyone who has to come up with something shocking to report everyday is going to put out garbage. I include in this major city newspapers, news only websites (like tech press), network and cable news, and weekly magazines.

Here are two good breakdowns of the problems/limits of modern mainstream news.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/journalism-needs-more-taylor-sw...

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1714648538746118265

Americans wisely agree, trust in media is very low https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-re....

It's worth pointing out that mass media has had a brief lifespan, about from the 1920s. And the "golden age" when everyone was following it was really only 1950 to 2000.

It's fine if it declines, and even if it disappears.

Canada's accidental banning of links to news is a good model, we should do it in the US. Let's tax any links to news sites from major web platforms.

[zzzeek]

you want the government to place a tax on linking to newspapers ?

I think the first amendment might have a few words on that

[eastbound]

Do you mean, news have a cost to society? We should tax the presence of news on Bing’s homepage, in your iPhone notifications, on television?

I agree, but those in power don’t. Maybe we should rather tax hyperboles and keywords like “Alert!” at the beginning of tweets. “Breaking news!”. It’s so stressing I auto-ban authors who use them.

Any usage of the red color on television. Usage of flashes and running messages. We should come up with a way to measure the equivalent of loudness (TV, radio and ads are all standardized in average authorized loudness) but for alertness.

We should smoothe out the level of alertness, across all digital screens.