But that's a strawman argument. By artificially setting the bar that high for entities like the NYT to be allowed to publish stories like that you make it impossible to publish any journalistic piece at all. And that higj bar allows everybody else to just past everything underneath it. A slippery slope if you ask me.

They can publish whatever they want. It’s a free country. And I’m free to disbelieve them or distrust their motivations.

Not arguing with that. The thing with free speech so is to be aware of the consequences for society if the public discurs becomes based on opinions, distrust and partisanship instead of civility and facts.

The New York Times does not have a monopoly in facts.

Seems like the onus is on the NYT to be more scrupulous in establishing that.

Who is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to publish stories?

That is the straw man.

Or, that seeking profit isn't inherently evil? Maybe it's working as designed? Poor journalism will suffer profits (at least we hope). Good journalism will attract more profits.

That’s also a straw man, since literally no one is making that statement.

The point of contention is whether after arguing that a tax cut was needed to do capital investment, did the savings from the tax cut actually go to capital investment, or merely financial trickery of stock buy backs as the critics of the tax cut predicted.

Literally everything else is a distraction.

There are many more media companies, employing far worse in the standards of journalism, making more money. Even if you can make an argument that their standards have slipped they still aren't Buzzfeed.

I think it's intensely incorrect and that journalism is an asset to society that definitely is deserving of public subsidies - but given the environment NYT is operating in they're either going to need to seek a profit or a patron. I think it's pretty obvious the sort of PR fallout the Washington Post has (somewhat deservedly) gotten after being taken over by Bezos.

There’s no silver bullet in any of this. If the government subsidies journalism the government can control journalism. At least with corporate control you can have competing corporations telling alternate sides of the story. But ultimately it’s on the public to be skeptical and critical consumers of media.

I agree that both are corruptible, but I'd rather see some heavily subsidized government friendly news sources that then receive competition from private corporations (similar to the british or canadian model with the bbc and cbc respectively) rather than rely wholly on corporate backed news sources... NPR and PBS are alright I guess, but their budgets have been slashed several times over and while there is good journalism (like the Newshour) there isn't the budget to cover stories in as in depth a manner.

I'd also like to highlight that as much as people fear government control of subsidized news sources - both PBS and NPR have been quite decently independent, with PBS in particular not having qualms about investigating the government when warranted.