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by andreygrehov 462 days ago
The answer is ad revenue. If you go against what your subscribers believe in, you lose money. If you lose money, you might lose your job. If you lose your job, you can't pay your mortgage.
2 comments

I suspect plenty of government money directly flows to newspapers as part of various campaigns to sway public opinion on certain politically important topics.

Perhaps moreso outside the USA where just a handful of paid articles can sway some topic important for US foreign policy.

Middle East governments are huge newspaper advertisers. The Chinese government has a propaganda page in the wsj.
But then you introduce a subscription model and people decry how the good news is paywalled…
When the paywalled model is just as unwilling to go against its advertisers as the free model, it not surprising people aren't happy with the change.
Ok so there's nothing they can do. Got it.