Corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value. It merely continues to exist because their business model, advertising, allowed them pivot into being drama generating entertainment machines.
I'm not defending the clickbait content a lot of outlets engage in but I'm concerned that if the "corporate media" disappeared tomorrow a lot of things would go uninvestigated. I'm also not sure that the number of stories published is a worthwhile metric either. Maybe one truly eye-opening investigative story is worth a hundred boring clickbait articles, I don't really see how you'd quantify it.
But sure, that statement is an improvement because it at least makes clear that if you were to remove the corporate media tomorrow something of important value would be lost. Something the original statement definitely does not convey.
We can even go as far as to say that corporate media likely will not disappear anyway, and if it were to, in 2022, it would just be repackaged in a different format with new corporate or neo-corporate entities in its place.
In conclusion, and irrespective of the hyperbolic rhetoric of “corporate media produces nothing of value” or the more analytically amicable, “only the tiniest fraction of corporate media produces value”, I hereby declare an end to all corporate media and it’s theoretical subsequent reiterations.
But your average individual also doesn't, and realistically won't, have the reach of corporate media. That's where their value lies: they are able to get stories out to millions of people and the recognition behind their name to give credibility to the reporting.
The irony of this is that the reach of corporate media is effectively deadened due to the reason that we’re having this discussion at all: the same outlets bely their own influence by publishing worthless content. In a world without corporate (news) media, there are still other ways to get news out through the wire.
Credibility is a good point, but speaks to a larger discussion on whether credibility in the media is based off of reputation, legacy, acolytes, accolades, etc?
At the end of the day, if the fall of corporate media effectively obliterates peoples will to “speak truth to power”, as the journalists like to say, then society is in pitiful shape and those whose will would disappear along with the Post, the Times and the Tribune lack integrity.
In the scenario we’re discussing (a world without corporate media), people who truly care enough about events, plots and schemes that threaten the moral fiber, dignity, agency and safety of humanity will see to it that they’re uncovered. That is unless, all investigative journalists are frauds who are driven only by glory and gold.
What you’ve described would be “better”, sure. It would be “better” if it rained during a drought than if it didn’t. But what are people going to do in the meanwhile?
Is “corporate” media the only kind of media there is that can present the news either way?
It's a poor contribution to a conversation about the value of media as business enterprise because it's really not clear what the hyperbole is or what the common relatable point is supposed to be. And it might even be subtly nihilistic or privileged ("who's to say I can't believe whatever the hell I want regardless of what them news people say, they're probably just pushing what they want to believe just I like I am anyway").
So "only some fraction of the corporate media's output has intellectual value" would be an improvement. Increased clarity often is.
And it could lead to actually useful understanding, which is that a LOT of things which have high rates of mediocre or even useless output still have value.
If you're genuinely confused by this kind of usage, and actually believe that those absolute terms are used sincerely, then I don't know what to tell you... maybe try to understand culture and language usage better?
I'm pretty sure the original was hyperbole but more accurate statement would be "most of what corporate media produces have zero or negative value and is just facilitator for the clicks"
If anything, corporate "news" spam drowns out these deeply researched investigative stories because, as GP said, the market conditions favor drama farming clickbait over an "exposé of highly toxic hazards inside Florida’s only battery recycling plant" which, while clearly important and deeply researched, I have never heard of.
That said, most of these journalists are from "corporate media," so that it "produces nothing of intellectual value" is as you say incorrect.
We get it, you are uninformed. It was in major newspapers, was on PBS Frontline, and was adapted for radio, and it won a Pulitzer. You haven't heard of it, that's on you.
* E.U. Settles on Russian Oil Price Cap After Fraught Talks
* A phony climate foundation in Germany helped Russia complete Nord Stream 2 after U.S. sanctions threatened to derail it.
* U.S. Employers Add 263,000 Jobs, Showing Strong Demand for Workers
* Why are middle-aged men missing from the labor market?
* Alex Jones Files for Bankruptcy
* As Officials Ease Restrictions Amid Protests, China Faces New Pandemic Risks
* Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find
* Kanye West was suspended from Twitter after posting a swastika.
* Cameroon Tries to Become Third African Nation to Advance
* From The Athletic: Follow real-time updates from Serbia vs. Switzerland.
Sure, some of these (e.g. first twitter headline) seem to follow an agenda, but most of these are just plain old news. It is easy to think "all of this is available on Twitter or through other independent journalists", but twitter has the luxury of being able to look at what the papers are reporting on. If you didn't have the likes CNN, NYT and the BBC, you wouldn't have reporters at white house press conferences, people reporting from Ukraine, nor any sort of real curation of the news.
Are there blind spots? Of course. Twitter is way better in some niche areas. Do the news outlets show biases? Yes, of course. But without the big news outlets, twitter wouldn't have as much to go off of. I like to think of it the other way around... imagine that corporate media didn't exist. You'd have thousands of independent journalists looking into different things with no curation. Eventually, some of them would realize that to be effective, they need to form groups, since some areas are too big for one person to cover. Eventually, small groups that people followed would grow larger as they try to report on more and more things. Eventually, they'd collectivize and form larger "corporations". You'd be back to square one.
And I'm just talking about plain old news. All of this is leaving aside the big and costly investigative pieces that some of the larger outlets are able to put together. Go and read anything at https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206 and tell me if anyone but "corporate media" would be able to do anything even close to these.
BuzzFeed News Has Won Its First Pulitzer Prize
BuzzFeed News won for its innovative series exposing China’s mass detention of Muslims and was named a finalist for its colossal FinCEN Files investigation into the global banking industry.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/pulitzer-priz...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News#Awards_and_recog...
Though make sure that you differentiate BuzzFeed News from BuzzFeed... the later is the way that makes money that is able to support news site without needing subscriptions and paywalls.
Never seen any intellectual value in a BBC drama, comedy, or nature documentary?
The C of BBC does not look like the current practical meaning of corporation for or typical case. Being state-owned change a lot of things.
People like to read that stuff.
There's a difference between "wanting" and "liking" something. The reason doomscrolling on social media is a thing is because people want their fix. Whether or not they truly like it is another matter. Most would probably admit they don't, if they really sat down to unpack everything about it.