Maybe we don't need 18 different 24/7 "news" channels? That's why we have these "filler" programs.
>But I think people are striving for an entirely objective media that simply doesn't exist, and never has.
News isn't sexy. News doesn't sell. Stoking emotions does, and that's why we are where we are. Even in the days of the newspaper, the OpEd section is what got attention.
Note in this context, "there's a finite number of news you can report", means the constraint is you (the reporter), not the news. The news is effectively infinite, it's the organization doing the reporting the one which has a finite "bandwidth" and must pick and choose, introducing unavoidable subjectivity in the process.
So there may be "filler programs", but the reason for them is not that there are not enough actual news to report.
The act of choosing what to report and what to leave out is a subjective act, just like the same photo cropped differently can tell opposite stories!
So there is yellow and bad journalism, but even "good" journalism cannot be objective.
That applies to fact checkers too. Anything ideologically inconvenient will be ignored.
> Anything other than a chronological list of events (which would be an awful user experience) requires subjective judgement of importance.
How is getting a list of things that have happened each day awful? What's better than RSS?
I see this said a lot but I don't think that's a simple request, assuming what we're really saying here is "objective facts, not opinions". There's a finite amount of news you can report so which objective facts you choose to show your readers is in itself a subjective decision of "newsworthiness". And how do you present that news to your audience? Anything other than a chronological list of events (which would be an awful user experience) requires subjective judgement of importance.
I’m also very dubious that you could build a sustainable business around such an idea. I think a lot of people say they want objective news but when presented with a choice they’ll favour media that caters to their existing biases.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of garbage media out there today and it can absolutely get better. But I think people are striving for an entirely objective media that simply doesn't exist, and never has.