The hallmark of an impartial news media is that it pisses off both sides.
Nope. That's the hallmark of a news media that stirs people up to get them engaged, which is half the reason we are in this mess (and that's a very conservative estimate). They've always done it, but the increased competition from the internet has made it much worse. It used to be that they just had to get people to subscribe to a newspaper or tune to particular radio or TV station. But now people are watching YouTube and using social media where they are constantly being blasted from all sides in an effort to make them follow links to wherever. Who cares how it effects peoples' perceptions - so long as we get those clicks!
How did this happen? In the early days of the internet it was expected that news and information providers would survive on subscriptions, but this business model didn't work out. People were already paying enough just get on the net at all, and then paying for every byte received. Few were willing to pay even more to access the websites they wanted to visit. This situation was ripe for switching to a format where site access is free but you have to put up with onerous advertising.
Of course this model attracted players who weren't concerned about journalistic integrity, especially since regulation was much more lax than on conventional media. It also suffered from a much a lower cost of entry. Anyone who could rustle up a few hundred bucks for their own domain name and website hosting could become a 'publisher' with worldwide coverage. This was heralded as a great thing for 'hobbyists', and it was. But of course it would be abused. It did exactly what you would expect from giving every hyper-partisan nutcase a printing press more powerful than any newspaper at practically zero cost.
The obvious result was that convential media would struggle to survive in a world where where people could get 'news' for free. Their reaction to this was also totally predictable - every news item became clickbait as they desperately tried to keep people on their sites. To make matters worse they lowered their advertizing standards to the point where most of it now borders on spam if not outright fraud, as space is sold to third parties who can put anything they like on it (and that will be
anything that brings in money). Finally, to keep costs low they are making use of algorithms to generate content - ranging from targeted advertising that nobody bothers to check, to targeted news that merely serves to amplify reader's biases, to articles generated by AI that doesn't know or care about the difference between fact and fiction.
I shake my head when seeing what mainstream media allow on their sites these days. Sure I could get rid of those adverts and clickbait 'news' links by subcribing, but if they can't even vet that garbage properly why should I give them my money? I stay off them unless I need a cite for something, and stick to commercial product and publicaly funded news sites who don't need to debase themslves to stay alive. Unfortunately however many people don't. They consume that garbage not realizing the harm it is doing to them.
www.dailymail.co.uk
