Slashdot Mirror
Online Journalism Is Becoming a Billionaires' Plaything (Again)
Nerval's Lobster writes "In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, the titular newspaper magnate (played with cheeky insouciance by Orson Welles) gleefully tells a doubter that he's prepared to lose a million dollars every year in order to keep publishing. "At a rate of a million dollars a year," he smirks, "I'll have to close this place in 60 years." Over the past decade, of course, many newspapers and magazines have lost a lot more than a million dollars a year, and there are signs that online publications are having trouble holding their finances together, as well. But some very rich people are stepping in to prop things up: first Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million, then eBay founder Pierre Omidyar offered journalist Glenn Greenwald a whole lot of cash to start up a general interest publication. Billionaires and multimillionaires, of course, have total freedom to fund whatever they want—and that could be a good thing for publications with a mission and a serious need for cash. But what if the rich investor disagrees with something that his pet publication releases into the world? If (and when) that situation occurs, it could serve as an interesting test of whether the latest version of this "generous benefactor" model can work more effectively as an impartial channel for news than it has in the past (when conflicts of interest often sparked titanic fights between editors and owners)."
Ok, who didn't have to lookup that word?
this has happened in all sectors of our emerging dystopia. the media was the first to go. the endgame of controlling information is to control everything. unless you have someone with good intentions at the helm, this is simply a step in a conquest of dominance. it's like the dark ages but with lawyers instead of soldiers.
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Billionaires and multimillionaires, of course, have total freedom to fund whatever they wantâ"and that could be a good thing for publications with a mission and a serious need for cash.
in the late 19th century and into the beginnings of the 20th century america and england had epidemic problems with the 'well to do' financing newspapers. it took investigative journalists that didnt care about the advertisers or the backers to correct this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers#The_press_in_the_Party_System:_1820.E2.80.931890
the difference being todays muckrakers have the internet. its much harder, although not impossible, to silence a glen greenwald or a julian assange if they so choose to expose your corruption. plutocratically controlled news is an important thing to have when voters are striking for fair minimum wage, protesting your banks in occupy camps, and largely backing healthcare and prison reforms that would undermine your system of creating intentional strife within parties or groups of people to further advance your cause.
Good people go to bed earlier.
.. always bends to business or advertisers. At this point I'd like (I know it's unrealistic) to have a news organization that's totally funded by the public via central bank and they have a bottomless well of money to spend in case of political emergency (aka build it into the system) that's run by the sanest citizens. They are picked for their sanity and respect for the truth. People who accept science, aren't easily fooled by left/right ideology, understand that societies have to change in accordance with what is true about the universe, even if that up-ends the status quo. We have people trying to cling to 19th century ideologies in a world where technology is fast making human elements unprofitable over the long term.
News sucks so bad because most people are just too scared or too sheepish to actually call out the corporate system on its bullshit because they depend on that very system for survival, too many people are easily manipulated by the threats of loss of income, relationships and status.
Why am I supposed to worry about Jeff Bezos having more of an effect on the editorial direction of the WaPo than I am on, say, Disney affecting the editorial direction of ABC News (or Gannett, if you want to stick with print)? The only difference that I can see is that the latter is answerable to shareholders and so might tolerate fewer losses on the business. IMO, this horse was out of the barn years ago, and the nouveau riche* are the "same as the old boss" at this point.
*Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
I wouldn't hold my breath over the Post launching an in-depth investigation into Amazon's contracts with the CIA, for example. More to the point, Bezos won't even have to say a word; even the dimmest editor knows which side of the bread his butter lies. Kinda like Russia Today's coverage about the treatment of the LGBT communities in that country is a bit... light. Or Al Jazeera's reportage on the practical enslavement of south pacific workers in the Middle East. Lesson: never single-source.