> but it isn’t the news and it hasn’t been for ages.
I have a better idea. The news has always been shit.
There's this weird fetish with "freedom of the press" that distorts the fact that news is still a business, run by free market forces, with the same distributions of incompetence and corruption as any free market.
It used to be the "nightly news", but we now have a 24/7 always-on consumption culture and news orgs have adapted to fill in all those remaining hours. Consolidation hasn't helped, but I can look at any news clipping from the early 20th century and see the same level of bullshit I see today.
I have a better idea. The news has always been shit.
There's this weird fetish with "freedom of the press" that distorts the fact that news is still a business, run by free market forces, with the same distributions of incompetence and corruption as any free market.
It used to be the "nightly news", but we now have a 24/7 always-on consumption culture and news orgs have adapted to fill in all those remaining hours. Consolidation hasn't helped, but I can look at any news clipping from the early 20th century and see the same level of bullshit I see today.