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points by marcus_holmes 2 days ago | 0 comments

This matters. Our systems of democracy were formed when journalism could be counted on to hold politicians to account. This is no longer true.

We have to change the system somehow so that independent investigative journalism is either funded without compromising its independence (this is difficult, as the recent bullshit coming out of the BBC is proving), or we replace this method of holding politicians to account with something that works just as well (I have no idea what).

Or we have to change our systems of democracy so that politicians cannot abuse them. Something like "no politician, or any members of their family, or their close friends, can ever be employed by any organisation that contracts with the government, or receives government funds, or benefits from government legislation". This is obviously going to be tricky.

[–] jimbokun 2 days ago

If anything newspapers over much of the past were even more partisan than today.

[–] marcus_holmes 2 days ago

It's not the partisanship that's causing the problem, it's the business model.

Investigative journalism, done properly, takes time and money. And it produces long articles that can be challenging to read and involve the detail that backs the claim. In a clickbait world, this doesn't produce profit.

There's no functioning business model for it now, but we have built our democratic systems on the assumption that there is. Rich folks buying newspapers and then meddling with their editorial policy was always a problem, but with the editorial office completely dependent on the rich folks for their salaries it gets harder to resist.

[–] nomel 2 days ago

The most truth comes from adversarial systems, motivated to find flaws in the other. There's nothing inherently wrong with being partisan. The problem comes when people align themselves to a single news org that only shows one side. Having news orgs in the middle is great too, of course, but the motivation to not rock the boat might be greater.

[–] hunterpayne 2 days ago

In theory I agree. In practice, with journalism, different camps tend to create their own information bubbles and then they get filled with propaganda and copium. I'm not sure what the solution is, but there was a high point for journalism and we are well past it now. To call what some organization put out information is doing some heavy lifting these days.

[–] nomel 1 day ago

You need to go in with the perspective that it's all biased propaganda. Neutral news orgs have never been a reality.

You look at multiple perspectives, and tease out reality from all the information, understanding that it's all biased. This has always been required.

[–] nunez 2 days ago

> we replace this method of holding politicians to account with something that works just as well (I have no idea what).

twitter and facebook were supposed to fill this purpose. oh well