Disney... and Vice... Welcome to 2015!
I suppose the YouTube adpocalypse followed shortly after, too, demonetising political content. So, a perfect storm. No more money from political content, suddenly, and now your biggest shareholders, Disney and Murdoch, demand change to keep up. Shame that.
Still, I'm sure I only saw fragments of their total body of work so it might be a skewed perception. My sympathies for those affected, these are tough times we are entering.
The thing then is: should I then trust other articles? I don't mind if publications have a political bent, either to the left or right, or if some opinion piece has some pretty far-out ridiculous views on something or the other (within limits). But journalistic pieces and even opinion pieces should get basic facts right and they shouldn't blatantly misquote people. I don't want to research and verify everything in-depth, so there needs to be some trust relationship between a publisher and the reader.
Every publication makes mistakes. It happens. But at some point the mistakes become severe enough that the trust starts to disappear. Misleading outrage drives attention, clicks, and views in the short term, but the long-term effects may be quite destructive if you're not careful.
I also see now that they've published several high quality non-political eg warzone pieces recently; that's a real loss. I'm hoping these journalists will find a new space going forward, without the other baggage.
It's possible to look at the same set of facts and to interpret them differently depending on perspective. I accept this, but _please_, can we come to agree to the same set of facts?
The problem is we're well past cherry-picking facts and well into making things up from whole cloth. The amount of 'news' that I read that is just absurdly wrong is disturbing. As soon as I find out a source seems to intentionally lie to me I discard it entirely. I'm more or less out of sources at this point.