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Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

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Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#91

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

I'm not paid at all, and I do pay for my news.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#92
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

I think we shouldn't be naïve about how money works to influence actions. Proving the quid pro quo is hard, but just the knowledge that the money is there and can go away at the whim of a private actor will having a chilling effect on the sort of content you report on. Journalistic entities have an incentive to project an image of an unbiased, principles institution untouched by the private business world, but as som…

This can be seen easily via pharma adds on major news networks. It's not like anybody's ever asked their doctor after witnessing the list of side effects scroll by.

Pharma ads as the #1 advertiser on major network news channels is purely to reign in negative press.

The very idea of consuming news wherein the primary funding comes from a third party is absurd, but it's what people are used to.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#93

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

> You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) ... Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this?

I have - well, not now, but a long time ago - and because of that, I pay for much of my news.

However it is not true, IMO, that "we caused the problem", because disorganized news consumers have less of a pull on what happens than organized, conscious forces like large companies involved in news media (well before Facebook, see my other comment).

PS - I'm not from the US.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#94
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

The Verge regularly publishes pieces critical of apple and google? this is from less than a week ago: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#95

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

Right. I would like to have Netflix for news. Pay $10 a month. And have access to NYT, NPR, The Economist et al. I want it to be easy to sign in and out.

I would also like everything to be cheaper.

With password managers, it’s not that much work to visit multiple websites.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#96
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

I actually stopped reading the Verge because of how relentlessly negative they were about everything related to tech. Which for a tech blog is sort of weird. So not sure what you mean about favorable coverage there.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#97

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

I advocate for publicly funded journalism, elections, etc. but our legislators are already captured as well. And yeah if that means higher tax revenue to support that then that's just what we have to do.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#98
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

The news/reporting side of the organization and the Opinion group are very very separate.

It's important to look at the news gathering side. Reporters don't take to being told to 'go easy on this group cos we have business ties' - that usually provides the opposite response.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#99
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

The Verge regularly publishes pieces critical of apple and google? this is from less than a week ago: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics...

I would say I've seen more critical pieces lately. I think over the last couple of years, a lot of this has broken down because of just how egregious corporate behavior has gotten. But especially around 2015-2016, it was palpable how much Verge was holding their tongue in articles especially in the months around Sundar Pichai interviews.
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