[smokefoot]

It’s pretty hard to quantify. Reading the tone of NYT headlines over the last 20 years, I observe a steady increase in side-taking on both sides of the newsroom. Those headlines and stories are empirically more engaging and the market values engagement above all else.

[techostritch]

I’m starting to wonder if post war America was this unique time in history, because I’m not saying your wrong but it also seems like historically the idea of an unbiased news media is not the norm.

In general I have trouble believing it’s the medias fault though, not that they’re without sin, I just think the forces that make something like this are bigger than the media.

[drewcoo]

> I’m starting to wonder if post war America was this unique time in history

It certainly was re: journalism.

When we only had the big three TV networks vying for our eyeballs, they each used news as a way to attract the broadest set of Americans. The nightly news was a loss leader, in the hopes that we'd watch the rest of the evening's programming/ads on that network.

The "unbiased" business didn't really exist until someone could be in all of our homes building rapport with our families every night. And cable, then more so the web, completely disrupted that.

There used to be many, many more newspapers, with room for distinction as the paper of record for any given demographic. Radio, then more so TV, put an end to most of those.