Which used to be the rule, but the rules weren't quite bulletproof enough so now Sinclair and a handful of others own far more news outlets than they should by a better metric. I'm not saying there's anything illegal about it, but I think it should be fixed.
But I also think that if someone made their fortune in industry, they probably shouldn't own newspapers. It's so much conflict of interest... it seems like sometimes it can be okay, but only if there's a really well enforced legal firewall between the interests of the owner and the news reporting. That's hard to manage if the owner isn't disconnected from decisions about what to fund or whether to promote staff critical of them.
There could be a middle ground, but if we can't define what rules constitute a fair middle ground it seems to just get worked around until effectively a few private voices dictate an awful lot of the spin applied to stories.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-censorship-conference-ce...
The HN discussion:
Anyone who's opinion exists outside of the current groupthink is forced to leave these big platforms. It makes it harder for the average person within this group to express themselves because these platforms make it easy. But many will and new platforms will form outside of big tech. These new platforms will have time and space to rethink how they operate and perhaps they will bring in a new era of consumer control.
Plenty of dissenting folks using non-traditional outlets like podcasts and YouTube that have an audience that rivals or is larger than legacy media.
Of course, this would not be possible in China where any dissenting voices would quickly be extinguished.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html