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Comment by Guy2020 | Hacker News Reader

Guy2020

When journalism is paid for primarily by corporate sponsors, the premise of "objective journalism" is absurd. People have to pay for their news if they wish to have the slightest hope of it being objective, but with the ubiquity of free content, paying for journalism now seems like an unwelcome deviation from the norm in the eyes of many. Ad sponsored journalism, and media in general, has poisoned the well. When you are used to getting something for free, it feels wrong when you have to pay for it. This cripples alternative media that isn't reliant on corporate sponsors...thus the ecosystem for "objective journalism" is weak.

The current environment, with respect to the aforementioned incentives, makes objectivity difficult -- not to mention the political/economic instability which adds tons of fuel on this fire.

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I sometimes wonder what the authors of the U.S. constitution would think about the modern "press". I wonder whether in some alternate universe the constitution could have been interpreted in such a way that special protections for the "press" only apply to the LITERAL press, i.e., to those who physically print news onto paper with a printing press. The world could be a lot different today if that's how our interpretation of the constitution had turned out (such a world would be better in some ways, maybe worse in others).

A physical newspaper has a natural tendency to incentivize payment models where the reader pays for the paper; a physical newspaper is much harder to alter after-the-fact; and a physical newspaper lends itself to a daily news cycle which gives writers time to think more carefully about what they write (with "Extra" editions being reserved for truly rare occasions like war breaking out or presidential assassinations).

I suppose we would have to reason about the intention/function of the press. As far as I understand, freedom of the press was about the dissemination of ideas. In a democratic republic, the people must have a means of circulating information about various issues so that voters can cast informed votes.

It could be argued that the modern press spreads confusion and is less about the dissemination of ideas for the purpose of informing the voting public; however, the history of the press is not a glorious one. The press has always been a mess.

Nonetheless, I think, as you say, the "slow press" is more in line with the idea of informing the public. The "continuous press" is more about pushing propaganda and conditioning the public...in my view.

The constitution doesn't have any special protections for the "press".

Generally, the courts have fairly consistently held that there is no constitutional differentiation between journalists and non-journalists in protection of free speech.

Special privileges and rights for the press are granted by means other than the constitution.

Gosh, thanks. I never cease to be amazed at my own ignorance. So I guess that makes all the rhetoric about "the fourth branch of government" even sillier than I already thought it was. (If journalism were to be a fourth branch, then it ought to have some "checks and balances", but right now it seems to have about as many "checks and balances" as Xerxes the God-King of Persia...)

Well of course it lacks checks and balances - it doesn't have any legislative power. To pretend otherwise is to conflate state power with personal rights. States don't have rights.

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