Last week an interesting article pointed out how quality journalism is increasingly resorting to paywalls in order to survive in a world where journalism is making less and less money, allowing well-researched news to more easily fade into the margins.
Being someone who works in the field, I can tell you Western states are increasingly discussing the idea of government funding to keep the independent press and publishing sector alive in an increasingly advanced world where the revenue streams are getting harder and harder to find.
I believe the strongest answer to fake news is Press Subsidies. Since itâs hard to imagine the free press looking any healthier in the world of tomorrow without state backing, or billionaire ownership, both of which have been the cause of less than scrupulous journalistic practices.
Oooh thatâs very interesting. Its definitely a real problem, with so much ânewsâ just trashy clickbait nowadays. I guess it could be argued that the game is representing this through âstate broadcasterâ, but that implies state ownership and therefore some element of bias.
Might make an interesting policy, one that would specifically annoy capitalists, reduce fake news, maybe arguably increase education?
Press Freedom is just how much the government can influence what the press might say, right? Seems to me thatâs independent of the freedom the press has to say what ever it likes about industrial sponsors.
I donât think modelling both in one is quite right.
Itâs pretty easy to spot that this article has incredible left-wing bias and makes many erroneous assumptions. The most glaring was linking to an interview with Stefan Molyneux as a âwhite supremacist on YouTube [who] will tell you all about race and IQâ which is utterly dismissive and inaccurate. For one, Stefan Molyneux is not a white supremacist, and has distanced himself from white supremacists, and his belief in the non-aggression principle would never allow for preemptive violence against others, including based on race; two, there is a lot of legitimate research to this day discovering the link between IQ and numerous factors, including race and IQ (and since IQ is more of a dirty word today, it is often shrouded behind other measurements like G, or General Intelligence, or standardized testing).
That is just one example. Somehow âThe Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictionsâ is represented as a lie, as if legal mandates to wear a mask and to lock down the country, imprisoning and fining people for not wearing a mask in public, is a totally settled issue with no need for journalism or public debate or any sort of discussion on the topic. It is fake news to have a different opinion on this? The fact that the author thinks there is âa great deal of excellent reportingâ coming out of the New York Times and the Washington Post is proof enough that the author does not get it. These legacy media organizations have spent the last few years propping up the Russiagate lie, theyâve manufactured consent for every last pointless war including Syria most recently, and now they are making sure we hear no other narrative but that these fascist COVID restrictions are justified, lest we fall pray to fake news that questions the governmentâs ability to handle the virus.
There has never been a time in history when fake news wasnât propagated, except now the real âpaywallâ has been torn down: the gatekeepers of the media-military-industrial complex. The age of legacy media that could simply copy-and-paste the governmentâs narrative and put it on the front page without any serious challenge is over. There may be charlatans on independent outlets that have a bigger microphone than they did before, just as there always were on legacy media outlets, except now there are a lot more voices in the marketplace of ideas that can refute those charlatans. When there were only a few channels or newspapers that people trusted, this was a vulnerability, not a strength, because it was so easy for sinister people to capture those few institutions, and therefore capture the full flow of information to the public. With the advent of the internet, there is more fake news that can be ridiculed and refuted from the legacy media and new media, and we better hope that we continue to have that freedom, and certainly not subsidize those that want the old regime in place.
What. I mean, come on. Thereâs no way thatâs true. Socio-economic factors? Sure. But race?
Care to provide a link?
fascist COVID restrictions are justified
Authoritarian, sure. But I struggle to see how they are fascist. For instance, the very idea that a German government would impose fascist measure on its country is laughable.
Is there scope for Social Media monitoring e.g. there is law suits against Facebook/Twitter at the moment which say that theyâre classed as publishers - a social media policing policy or creating a fact checker service would be in line with real life to counter the effects of fake news
I did often wish there were high capital cost powers or agencies in the law and order branch that allowed for fair internet regulation to target cyber-crime and cyberbullying, which would probably have a small bump on fake news due to the ability to prosecute. Internet censorship seemed like a stick for those problems when I was eager to find a carrot, of course thereâs a reason why we donât have such an ideal system. It would be costly to fund, and time-consuming to legislate.