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Comment by unity1001 | Hacker News Reader

This was caused by the consolidation of the press by a handful of corporations (at the moment 4-5 i believe) after the regulations that prevented that from happening were removed. The number of 4-5 also paints a false picture: Those 'different' corporations would have shared owners and large investment funds among them, so basically all press is consolidated among a handful of extremely rich men at this point.

There was absolutely no reason why such people would not buy out all news and use it as a tool to propagate their own private interests when those regulations were removed. Especially by using them to push their public agenda to boost their business interest and different corporations' stock prices. Just like how it was in late 19th century with the Robber Barons.

And don't even start looking at its effect on the elections - that's a bigger cesspit than what you can imagine.

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The news is not only shaped by news "organs" but also shaped these days by journalists themselves with their own interests and agendas whereas before they had an editor to dampen some of that personal stuff.

But now we have journalists lying in the face of facts or ignoring strong counterarguments.

In other words they have more or less all have their personal slant and push it to the fore without much restraint. There is little nuance. And by god, do they copy pasta talking points. Today Shinzo Abe out of the blue acquired the adjective "divisive".

> whereas before they had an editor to dampen some of that personal stuff.

Or alternatively, before they had an editor to set that set of interests and agendas.

They did but editors tend to temper their journalists and keep them from going off the deep end of the pool.

So yes, they had agendas too but they were kept from going into wild Pravda as well as The Enquirer territory.

I very much think that all of those 'journalists' always magically agree with the majority shareholders of the organization who pay their paycheck.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/five-reason...

"All Murdoch editors, what they do is this: they go on a journey where they end up agreeing with everything Rupert says but you don't admit to yourself that you're being influenced. Most Murdoch editors wake up in the morning, switch on the radio, hear that something has happened and think: what would Rupert think about this? It's like a mantra inside your head, it's like a prism. You look at the world through Rupert's eyes."

...

It would not be different in any other corporate media outlet. Only maybe more subtle.

This explanation cannot stand history check. When broadcasting worked over radiowaves, and press required literal printing presses, the entry barrier to become a medium was several levels of magnitude higher then it is today, and consequently grip of corporate power was stronger. One may say this is why public had better opinion about media - because it was a closed club, or a caste if you like, and media's dirty laundry very rarely had a chance to appear before everyone's eyes. Not because media were better, but because consolidation let them sit on their pedestals unchallenged. And btw we should stop pretending that growing audience cautiousness towards mass media is some kind of problem.

Yes. Twitter is destroying classical media. Journalists claim to be neutral observers of reality, and when the only source of information you had about them was their short TV reports or newspaper articles, there was no other basis on which to disagree. People might have suspected some stories didn't get reported, or they might have occasionally read a story about something they knew a lot about and realized it was biased, but there was no solid way to prove bias.

But now for years they have all been on Twitter and it is suddenly plain to see. Freed from the rules and conventions of their professional medium, they spot nonsense on Twitter and show just how poor their understand truly is. The illusion of impartiality is impossible to sustain like this, which is why the BBC has tried restricting journalists from Twitter, but it's just impossible. They can't stay away, and their credibility declines with every tweet they make.

Not at all. Then, and even until late 1970s, regulations prevented corporations from buying up local small media. Any local group could have their own radio, leave aside their own tv until 1970s. Now that the regulations have been removed, all of them have been bought up. So much that when the network owner starts running a story, the same story is run with the exact same script in all state, local networks.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/02/598916366/sinclair-broadcast-...

This seems to be soft-selling this, they conspired to achieve this aim:

https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/rupert-murdoch-thatcher-me...

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