Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Do you pay for your news?

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

"Please don't complain about 'fake' news or a lack of objectivity in the media unless you support real journalism," writes Doug Johnson. "Subscribe to a newspaper. Support public radio. By a magazine. Make newspaper readers out of your kids." I understand his reasoning, but it's not that simple. Case in point: I took out a subscription in The Logic recently as an experiment (I've supported various news initiatives over the years). It's expensive, but hires real journalists. But the problem is, the news is skewed to represent the interests of the people paying the subscriptions, which is manifestly not the people without (say) their own companies, an investment in the stock market, etc. So the concern still exists: the news still reports the opinions of the people who pay for it, whether it's advertisers, businesses, people trying to destabilize society, whatever.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 23, 2024 6:11 p.m.

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