I'm a reformed news junkie. At one point, in addition to consuming local, national, and cable TV news daily, I also read three newspapers a day (I was young and hand more time on my hands back then) and listened to NPR. But my confidence in the news was shattered long ago. It started with the OJ Simpson trial. Back then I was between jobs and had time on my hands so I could watch the actual trial, which was televised on CourtTV. Day after day, the prosecution would lay out their case and then the defense would destroy it. OJ really got his money's worth with that defense team. At night I would then watch the news coverage, which only told the prosecution story. I kept say, "did we watch the same trial?" Long before the glove didn't fit, I was 100% confidence he would be acquitted. But the world was
shocked when jury came back with the not guilty verdict because they only knew one side of the story.
After that I started to consume news with a more critical eye. Another story I remember was on NPR and the narrative they wanted to tell was that streaming music services were screwing the independent musicians. The example they gave was how a radio station might play an artist song and get some sum of money per play, but a much, much lower payment on a streaming service - of course they completely forgot to mention that a radio station is a broadcast where a single play could be heard by millions, but a single play on a streaming service was only heard by a single person.
At a certain point, after you catch a few of these stories, you start to wonder what other stories aren't true that you're not catching. And you lose all faith in the institution (it's super depressing) The question I like to ask folks who excuse the news is this - if a close friend of yours lied about something important to you and you caught them, how many times would you have to catch them lying to you before if you'd stop trusting them all up? It's not many 1 maybe 2 times. The news has done this to us all over and over.
What's the solution? Like it or not, we really need journalism in this country. I tell folks that the collapse of the news industry is one of the greatest problems in this country that nobody is trying to fix.
The only solution I've been able to dream up is this. Create a tax on digital advertising and cloud computing (these are arguably one of the biggest causes of the decline in journalism). Then use that money to create 3 quasi governmental news organizations (like the post office or amtrak). Make it pay journalists like software engineers, with the expectation that they waive their voting rights for life. (note that Bob Woodward once said he doesn't vote to mitigate bias). Then set up an system where each news agency is incentivized to monitor the other news agencies for accuracy. If they think they're misrepresenting the facts, they can present that to collection of ombudsman* to judge. If it's deemed that they misrepresented the facts, they lose budget. Do it enough, and they're out of business and and the money is used to form a new news agency.
*Note ombudsman, once a mainstream in the news, seem to have all but vanished.
Anyway, that's my story and my idea. What's yours?