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from the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! dept.
New York Times CEO warns publishers ahead of Apple news launch
Apple Inc is expected to launch an ambitious new entertainment and paid digital news service on Monday, as the iPhone maker pushes back against streaming video leader Netflix Inc. But it likely will not feature the New York Times Co.
Mark Thompson, chief executive of the biggest U.S. newspaper by subscribers, warned that relying on third-party distribution can be dangerous for publishers who risk losing control over their own product.
"We tend to be quite leery about the idea of almost habituating people to find our journalism somewhere else," he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "We're also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else's journalism."
Thompson, who took over as New York Times CEO in 2012 and has overseen a massive expansion in its online readership, warned publishers that they may suffer the same fate as television and film makers in the face of Netflix's Hollywood insurgence.
See also: Apple secures deal with WSJ for paid Apple News service, NYT and Washington Post opt out
Apple reaches deal with Vox for upcoming Apple News subscription service, report says
Apple is on a hardware-launching bonanza ahead of its big TV announcement
Apple teams with media literacy programs in the US and Europe
Previously: Apple in Talks to Create "Netflix for News" Subscription Service
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday March 24 2019, @02:15PM (4 children)
The linked essay on a domain matching your username gives "mechanisms for all kinds of spin and/or information hiding" that arise from journalism in a capitalist economy. This raises one question: In not-$$$-based journalism, who feeds and shelters reporters and otherwise pays the cost of journalism?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday March 24 2019, @06:02PM (3 children)
Here's the same answer I gave when you asked on my website:
I think the best possible answer to that in the context of our present system is the same as payment for, and regulation of, provision of medical care: Through taxation, government.
Of course, getting to that point… very difficult.
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Science. It's like magic, except real.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday March 25 2019, @11:16AM (2 children)
Particularly when state-funded journalism has been seen to produce such fine publications as RT and Sputnik News.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday March 25 2019, @03:19PM (1 child)
On the other hand, capitalism has produced Fox "News", a pure agitprop outlet driving the oligarchy's narrative, and AM talk radio / "news", a wholly-corporate-owned garbage-spewing operation; and states do differ. The USA, for instance, still has a well armed populace and the ability to speak mostly freely, and is working its way (slowly) out of its superstitious funk despite constant pressure from those who wish to keep the populace as befuddled as possible.
I'm certainly not making the case that US state-run news would be perfect, or even that I'm certain it would work at all. I do think it's now pretty obvious that the only way our current news can be used in any really informative way is to range far and wide across as many outlets as possible, figure out as much of what is currently happening as one can (which requires checking news sources outside the US at this point), then consider each US news outlet in the light of that information, note what stories they didn't bother to cover, note the spin they put on what they did cover, then rinse and repeat all across the spectrum until one has sifted out the baby-down-the-well | if-it-bleeds-it-leads | OMG Terrorism | WeMustSaveTheChildren | DrugWarScareProp | CopPorn | Nationalism | Jingoism | OMG Immigrants | LeftTrash | RightTrash | LibertarianTrash | SCOTUS-Trash | MommyismTrash | OMG SexTrafficking | OMG LGBT/etc. | OMG WeMustDisarmThePopulace... and so on and so forth. I really could go on for quite some time. Our news is currently an outright sewer.
You're quite right in that state media under US control could also go very wrong here, potentially in new and unpleasant ways, while not solving anything.
But if it were possible to try (dubious, but you asked), I'd like to see it tried. Because capitalist media has already gone horribly wrong. Again, right along the track of medical care. There was a time when I would have said our capitalist medical system was fine, and I still, looking back, think it was. Today, it's a lawyer-addled financial nightmare with poorer outcomes than other countries for those non-rich people who have to use it, and government control over how those costs are managed is looking a heck of a lot better to me than letting it continue to financially run away with itself as it has been doing for some time now.
I can also point to some US government controlled areas that work fairly well. In spite of all the corruption, entrenched bureaucrats, mommyism, etc.
Examples that come immediately to mind include the CDC, food inspections, the air traffic control system, a considerable degree of environmental cleanup, and support of many kinds of useful and informative research.
Which is not to say the government would manage not to screw this up. But again, it's already screwed up. Badly. So worth trying. IMHO.
Capitalism has had its chance here, and it has roundly failed. I'm ready to entertain some different implementations, if 'twere possible.
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Kleptomaniacs always take things literally.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 25 2019, @04:58PM
Why not both? Corporations publish their own press releases, non-profits have their own newsletters and news websites...lots of organizations have motivation to invest in private news outlets, and as long as we've still got free speech*, the more propaganda the state news feeds, the greater their incentive will be to push back with their own couter-publications. It doesn't have to be one or the other. We still (for now...) have great technologies like RSS. You can have you US State Department feed right beside your Amnesty International feed. And maybe an "OPEC News Coalition" feed beside that too if you're into that kind of thing.
But there's some news that's important even though nobody really has an interest in publishing it. That's where it would be best for government news services to step in to fill the gap. The stuff that's highly controversial and likely to be twisted into propaganda is probably going to be covered from a half dozen different angles no matter what.
*And if we don't have free speech, the question of who is publishing the news becomes entirely irrelevant.