Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

I studied Journalism and trained as a Journalist a lifetime ago (1999-2002), before the internet really (technical term looming) fucked everything up. Thing is, even back then we were studying the impact of the 'Janus view of the Press' - this concept that any and every news publication was a two-headed beast, seeking to find the balance between great, objective journalism ... and money to keep the lights on.

Back then is was more philosophical than existential - we debated whether it was morally acceptable for a writer to take into consideration the size of a company's ad account when covering them in a story; now that the focused channel of broadcast media has been fragmented, so advertisers no longer pay a premium for access to readers and viewers of the nightly news, every journalist has to be mindful of their commercial impact (though this still needn't impact their writing choices) because they may be out of a job next week.

Plus ça change and all that. I'd like to see more debates around how to fund the new model (now that we've discovered it was the channel, not the content, that people actually valued for a couple of hundred years), not all this hand-wringing about the impact of money on objectivity because that's an old, boring conversation. Ultimately, advertising has been funding journalism for a long, long time. I wish it wasn't so, but I also wish it rained doughnuts.

Is it necessary to debate about funding models for journalism? Money will find its way. People will find their information and entertainment. New channels will form. Capitalism works quite well for this.

You can debate about government intervention, if capitalism does not incentivize as people want. Maybe the government should pay for some of the journalism? Maybe we need more control and oversight for "high-quality" journalism?

> Money will find its way. People will find their information and entertainment. New channels will form. Capitalism works quite well for this.

Depends on what you call 'working well': we currently witness the direct consequences of the commoditization of what could arguably be considered as a public service--namely, access to trustworthy information for all--, but somehow some still have faith in that model.

You are perfectly right that money will find its way, but the question is: whose money, and for what goal? Big corporation or mogul's money, who want to buy mindshare in public opinion and trade it for influence in the political sphere, like, say, the good media networks of M.Berlusconi, Bouygues and tons of others?

I think as the 'Fourth Estate' there's a definite need for Journalism to stay well away from government funding, control and oversight - while I would contend almost all journalists are capable of setting aside any biases such a funding model might create, 'Journalism must be done fairly, and it must be seen to be done fairly' and being dependent on the government makes it hard for a populace to believe it's objectively investigating the government.

But you encounter the same issue if you suggest, say, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ought to fund "high-quality" journalism. (When was the last time the WashPo ran a scathing attack on Amazon?) Even some kind of group model - part government, part philanthropist, part donors will always create a perception of bias.

I'm mixed on your point about Capitalism. Yes, 'the market' will deliver what the people want, but not always what they need ('in the public interest' v 'of interest to the public'). A government example might work here - would taxpayers in one state willingly contribute money to a road project in another? I suspect not - taxes aren't voluntary for just that reason. Longform investigative journalism, I feel, would similarly not be funded by sufficient people. And I think that would usher in a new era of corruption in most capitalist nations.

I think qznc has a valid point: as I get older I see less and less point in discussing how things would work in an ideal case when we have no realistic way to get to there from here. Concrete ideas like "should the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation fund "high-quality" journalism?" are well worth discussing; abstract debates around "what would be the ideal model?" can very easily become detached from reality.

> Longform investigative journalism, I feel, would similarly not be funded by sufficient people. And I think that would usher in a new era of corruption in most capitalist nations.

is that how you feel about the BBC?

That's a great point. I don't have much feeling about the BBC (I've spent most of life in Australia), but my 'go to' thought when discussing the impact of Media on revealing corruption is The Moonlight State, which ultimately brought down the State Government of my home state Queensland ... and was created by the ABC.

Indeed, one could argue that a commercial provider wouldn't have invested in longform (I really meant long-term as much as length) as much, but state-sponsored broadcasters had the time and space. So I don't think it could be the only journalism, but you make an excellent point about it having a special place (especially when protected by legislation from becoming the DPRK Mouthpiece).

To be fair, the BBC has arguably been getting worse in the quality of its reporting/news coverage for a while now. There's definitely been an tendency for them to sensationalise stories on their website, and some of the opinion articles are the kind of thing you'd see in a standard newspaper rather than the quality you'd expect from them.

Capitalist press is pretty bad, and always has been. ""Freedom of the press ... is freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to.""

(While digging for that quote I found http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/30/censors... , which sums up the problem)

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