Sure, but mostly I assume that the alterior motives are things like "Make the reader excited to read more here (and make us more money)" or "Don't make the reader feel confused (and possibly go away and stop making us money)." It's unusual that you have situations where a news purveyor has forces acting stronger than the idealism of its employees or the necessities of the markets.

You say this, but we see partisanship and ideology placed before profits all the time, almost every time. How many major newspapers are worth basically zero; how many broadcast news have seen their viewership fall into the toilet; how many internet newsies have lost their jobs - all because they do nothing but grind axes all day and do their best to covertly manipulate their audiences?

Mostly I see broadcast news programs trying to survive by flattering the ideological preconceptions of their target audience while viewership falls for other reasons. There's a greater diversity of entertainment available which sucked for cable news. And Craigslist in particular decimated the income of most newspapers. Also changes in the media landscape open up the possibility of competition in a way that didn't exist when ABC, NBC, and CBS had their comfy oligarchy. And these days, as far as I can tell, the salaries of the reporters I respect seem to be payed for by the ad impressions viral clickbate put out by the same journalistic outfits except for the weekly I'm paying $225 a year for.

s/alterior/ulterior

Outlets also don't need ulterior motives to produce biased output. If most of your staff hold a conservative outlook, they'll naturally be more skeptical of non-conservative viewpoints in their reporting etc.

Healthy skepticism is a feature of conservatism.

That explains Fox news so clearly.

Then how does the converse explain the other media outlets?

Logically, that doesn't follow. Here, let me explain the joke: You claim that conservatives have healthy skepticism and yet my observation is that the conservative television news outlet continuously streams nonsense and yet seems to be doing quite well. These circumstances are a retort to your assertion.

Conversely, what? Nobody asserted that liberals possessed a healthy skepticism or that liberal news outlets don't also continuously stream nonsense.

If you'd like me to make some assertions, I'd happily do so, but if you're looking for a partisan viewpoint to attempt to deconstruct, you'll not find one here.

A good start would be to ban wholesale both Bloomberg and Washington Post articles from HN. Nothing from those publications should be trusted.

I can think of better places to start, but that's not the point, is it?

The point is that you should be aware of individual biases, and should diversify your media consumption.

Apperantly not. According to this thread and hacker news in general you shouldn't diversify your media consumption. Unless what is meant by that is different sources with broadly the same agenda.

Personally, I find this boring. Perhaps you agree.

Even in the most extreme possible case where the WaPo is an outlet for Jeff Bezos' personal opinions, is it really the case that Jeff Bezos couldn't have anything interesting to tell us? One billionaire-owned newspaper isn't that bad on its own, because the other newspapers can still report on the owner of the one. What's really scary is when the billionaire owners go golfing together, which would be a failure of the system that banning a couple publications couldn't help us with.

Hasn't this been the case for some time? The number of people who actually matter in the news industry is only a few thousand, and their social graph looks like they're all married to each other's cousins (which is only half a joke).

Could you expand on that for those who dont follow the news industry closely.

> and Washington Post

Is Jeff Bezos running for Political office too?

You just moved the line from running for Presidential party nomination, skipped over mayor of major city, and jumped right to billionaires.

Add on; If all of a sudden you can't be wealthy and own (part of?) a media company, it really hurts the quality of journalism; you'd be left with small town or independent blogs; more susceptible to fake news -- and, more concerning, fear of publishing.

On the contrary, the media consolidation that has left papers in the hands of a few individuals has been tremendously bad for journalism. The only safe types are either diverse private ownership (more than two owners) or blind trusts. Yes, this rules out a lot of existing news outlets.

Virtually all the UK papers are now narrowly owned by individual billionaires whose agendas are very visible in the paper.

Blind trusts are a political fiction.

Why would we treat Bezos any differently? At his level of rare air, making/breaking regulations is just as important to profit as playing in the market. He has a whole lot more on the line politically than any politician.

I believe this is the Fed Philadelphia source

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and-data/re...