The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#101

Post by rbecker » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

fock wrote: post #84

rbecker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those sites look like news sites to me, except the Atlantic, which is indeed limited to opinion/commentary. Salon's About page: "Salon covers breaking news, politics, entertainment, culture, and technology through investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays." A few titles from their site: -As pandemic spreads, feds go MIA -Did Steve Daines get pharma kickback? -The second pande…

nothing in "investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays" is, what I consider news. q.e.d. vox.com: "Vox explains the news.". No shroud of being objective here either. q.e.d. slate.com: "we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, business, technology, and culture" general interest is vague, but no non-commented news here either, q.e.…

> nothing in "investigative reporting, [..]" is, what I consider news. q.e.d.

At this point I don't think there's anything I can say that will convince you.

But yes, if you invent some contrived definition of "news site" that disqualifies every left-wing site, only right-wing ones remain.

And I don't understand how that is even relevant to the article - as long as you can "get your news" from some source, that's enough. It doesn't have to pass some made-up purity test of what qualifies as a news site, because readers won't be applying that test. To pretend only right-wing sites share news and opinion for free is just willful blindness.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#102

Post by kerkeslager » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

jamisteven wrote: post #88

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon? '”

I struggle to see how this is relevant.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#103

Post by mythz » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

rawfan wrote: post #22

I just want Netflix for journalism. I don't want a super expensive sub to a dozen papers. I want one subscription, they all should be included (maybe offer different tiers if you are an arse) and it shouldn't be more than $20/month. Go.

You likely want Apple News+ [1] at just under $10 USD /mo - a single cost for a la carte access to a large pool of publications, basically the only premium subscription model that's going to be able to gain mainstream adoption.

[1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#104

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

antibuddy wrote: post #82

dukoid wrote: post #50

In Germany, part of the problem is that old media lobbying has successfully prevented a reasonable (text based) internet presence of public broadcasting... Some Google-translated coverage: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

Public broadcasting in Germany is no better than private media. In fact most topics are reported the same and even the opinion is the same. But even ignoring this, it is a big problem that publicly funded media is in direct economic competition with privately funded media. This is exacerbated by the official entertainment mission (Unterhaltungsauftrag[1]) and the usage of advertisement. [1]: https://www.die-medienans…

Clearly, private sector entertainment is unable to compete with public broadcasting.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#105

Post by reportgunner » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

> You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.

Excuse me but why would I want to pay for that ? I don't earn by reading articles online and the news websites are already littered with advertisements and autoplay videos. I get tracked around the web by these ads and I'm supposed to even fund that ?

Thank you but I will pass.

> The New York Times is, in fact, extremely valuable, if you read it critically and look past the headlines. Usually the truth is in there somewhere, as there is a great deal of excellent reporting, and one could almost construct a serious newspaper purely from material culled from the New York Times.

... and can't you do the same with Infowars ? Critically read it and look past the headlines ? Perhaps the truth will be there somewhere too. (albeit as a total negation of the Infowars article)

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#106

Post by kasey_junk » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #28

lm28469 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction. No one on this planet is 100% unbiased. It doesn't matter if it's free or $100 per article, it's still written by a human being with personal opinions, experiences, prejudices, &c. The easiest way to get close to the "truth", which is subjective in many cases anyways, is to read from many sources and cross check the facts between them.

Even if that kind of neutrality is not achievable it has been practiced by journalists for the longest time and they tried their best. Should we forego every trial because no judge can be impartial? The argument is lacking. That impartiality doesn't lead to economic success and sustainability for outlets is another story of course. Cross checking is required even if journalists wouldn't be as active in framing storie…

Neutrality in reporting is a relatively new concept and was brought about by the wire services so that they could have their content bought by the broadest reach of newspapers. You will still find unbiased reporting in the wire services themselves: Reuters, AP, etc.

Individual news sources have almost always been biased. This is why most cities had at least 2 major newspapers until relatively recently. You could get the liberal one or the conservative one (or in some places dozens of wildly politicized papers, anarchist papers from the early 1900s are great).

Consolidation has lead to a removal of voices from most local newspapers and the market has spoken when it comes to television: people prefer partisan news sources. The internet has gotten us closer to that 1900 view but then Facebook/Google became the arbiters of news for most people.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#107

Post by II2II » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

mattacular wrote: post #91

jamisteven wrote: post #88

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon? '”

This isn't history, it's current affairs.

Parts of the article are relevant to historical research. There is a discussion about the cost of access to academic papers, which is a serious issue and one that I can relate to. I remember trying to access a paper in an academic journal about a decade ago, and was almost immediately turned by the $20 or $30 price tag. I say almost immediately because I did some additional research into what the paper was. It turns out that it was a one page editorial! So not only would costs mount for legitimate resources for a serious research project, but researchers have to put in extra effort to ensure the resources are legitimate in order to control those expenses.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#108

Post by julesqs » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

I mean we do have PBS, we just underfund it relative to something like the BBC. We probably also don't have as strong of political norms around not politicizing it so it's inevitable that someone like Trump does.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#109

Post by dragandj » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

nikol_w wrote: post #93

freddie_mercury wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that $20 is enough to support multiple newspapers? That's nearly how much the New York Times ($17/month) alone costs and they lost money every year in recent history until 2018 and are only now turning the corner as a business. On the surface I'd assume that actual journalism -- not just clickbait opinion pieces -- is going to cost you way more than $20 a month if you want access to multiple sources…

This is the fallacy that led to the current broken model. Suppose that instead of paying $17 a month to get the NYT, I pay $20 a month to get that and five other similarly high quality news sources. Does this make it harder to fund journalism? Not at all. The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much. So do the five other organizations. And, since…

Let's not forget that these music services are possible because the authors are paid peanuts, i.e, almost nothing for their work (other than a handful of the most popular chart topping acts).

The thing with journalism is that you can't rely that much on back catalogs and artistic enthusiasm. An indie band might share all their music on Spotify for $1.37 a month revenue for the love of music, but that $1.37 will not buy you much of quality reporting...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#110

Post by blaser-waffle » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

jamisteven wrote: post #88

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon? '”

Napoleon got a citation, but who is the original quote from?