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by UVB-76 4782 days ago
It's all about incentives. Most major news organisations are private, for-profit entities. Profit is the primary incentive.

What turns a profit? High-brow commentary written by proper journalists, that only a small subset of your readership will fully understand and appreciate, or photos of the latest Hollywood B-list celebrity doing something embarrassing, churned out en masse by pseudo-journalists whose only qualification is being able to plagiarise content without being detected, generating far more page views and ad revenue?
2 comments
mixmax 4782 days ago
In Denmark we have "denmarks Radio" which is basically a state owned tv, web and radio media outlet whose purpose it is to educate the populace. This changes the incentives, because the income is from the state whose goal is to have educated and smart voters, not to make money on headlines. I believe the BBC works in a similar fashion, and it shows in their news coverage.
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dsego 4782 days ago
In Croatia we have national tv and radio. If you own a TV set or radio you are obliged by law to pay a monthly fee. This in theory means that they should be objective and impartial. However, the top heads there are appointed through political connections. So they're mostly a propaganda machine for the political parties in power. Since the politicians here are only puppets in the service of big money and foreign power, their agenda is mostly to serve their interests. Except for some small independent web sites (such as advance.hr), all other private newspapers and sites sell cheap infotainment, often poorly translated articles from english and american yellow-press.
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silvestrov 4782 days ago
BBC has standards. Denmarks Radio doesn't. DR's content is of surprisingly low quality in spite of being forbidden from running advertising. Educating the populace was something they did in the 70'ies. Today the managements uses "number of viewers" as their only compass.
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ryanholiday 4782 days ago
The incentive problem goes lower and more granular than that. How are most bloggers paid (or at least judged on performance)? Pageviews.

What metric has about the lowest correlation to quality, accuracy or significance? Pageviews.

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