The fairness doctrine only ever applied to broadcast TV and radio. It was considered constitutional on the grounds that these were limited public resources. It never applied to newspapers, cable TV, or web sites, which were far less limited.
It was never really the reason that news broadcasts aimed for fairness. They aimed for fairness because they were journalists, and they considered it a point of pride to be accurate and informative.
The broadcast networks (including Fox affiliates) still aim for that, despite the end of the fairness doctrine. But their markets have been eaten into by cable networks, some of which were explicitly founded as propaganda machines and discovered that people preferred it as entertainment.
That depends on what you mean by 'having a balanced news'.
Should reporting present both sides in the same light if the facts support one side more?
Does a presidential endorsement from the editorial section of a newspaper corrupt the impartiality of the reporting section of the newspaper?
> Does a presidential endorsement from the editorial section of a newspaper corrupt the impartiality of the reporting section of the newspaper?
It probably does. If your editor, boss and all your colleagues support candidate X and you come up with a story that hurts candidate X, will you really get to publish it? Will you even try to come up with such a story?
I'm not saying it's impossible to get this right, but under the current climate I don't think its possible.
traditional media is already losing the influence to be honest. Even big networks like CNN or Fox News are basically dying.
In the era of tiktok, twitter, podcasters and other services - traditional media is just too boring source of news. I would say that even the traditional search will die sooner or later.
they are sensationalist because they are trying to imitate the discourse like on TikTok or Twitter - some short sentence that makes people pay attention while reading the headline. It is like "click on us!!!"
And it is getting worse because media has to compete with online media.
> I'm sure some people crave the hollow mindless screaming of random influencers but there's still mindful people out there.
For sure, there are event podcasts with cool and calm discourse too. There are options.
Regrettably, history has shown us there is a section of business owner community that would happily vote in fascists to increase or protect their personal power and profit.
I dunno. I suspect you can only watch people vote against their own interests for so many years before you throw in the towel and decide to just support whoever is going to increase your own wealth.
Bezos bought WaPo when corporate news was a on a clear deccline, and it's consistently lost money on average. Bezos doesn't care, as you said, and it's not about making money but rather controlling a narrative.