I agree with all the criticisms of what the MSM passes off as journalism, but what would an actual solution look like, one that wouldn’t fall apart in six months to two years if implemented?
If I’m being honest, I have to view it as a return to normalcy. There was a weird, rare period of several decades when a few major news outlets both had enough market power to invest in real journalism and had enough pressure (internal and external) forcing them to do so. Before that, and again today, that’s no longer true. Any MSM outlet could invest more in journalism, and at times some have. What happens is, they start to lose market share and then hemorrhage money until they either change strategies or get taken over or get overtaken. From then on it’s pure selection effects that guarantee that those we consider the MSM at any point in time, with maybe a few on-their-way-out exceptions, will have many of the problems discussed here. The other possibility are outlets intentionally run at a loss by rich people. These are not companies with huge profit margins, and when numbers are available the actual-journalism portion is either much lower profit or operating at a loss.
There’s plenty of good journalism in the world, and it’s easy to find. Most people empirically just don’t want it enough to find and pay for it, when they could be entertained instead, and I don’t know how we solve that.
I will add it’s of course not limited to political news. Coverage of every other topic is similarly biased, misleading, and sensationalized, just over slightly different axes. “You will write this article from this viewpoint, now contact a dozen experts until one gives you a quote you can use to support what you want to say. No, you don’t have time to actually learn anything about the topic.”
