"They want factual neutral reporting."

If that's true, why is Fox News so much bigger than Reuters.

It is a lot easier to have the TV on in the background than it is to actually read

I know that's odd to say in this forum but we're probably all unusual here

Different business model and/or more credible to most people?

> The channel was created by Australian-born American media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO.

Fox news was founded to support a specific worldview. People "want" neutral reporting. What they "pay" for is to be outraged (pay with their attention).

There are many topics on which Fox News reporting can be more truthful than others. I remember this during the peak of BLM protests and riots, for example. They also tend to cover stories that others like Reuters ignore. So they have SOMETHING worth paying attention to even if some or most is not. But I don’t read them regularly so I can’t answer really. My feeling is Fox + a left leaning equivalent like Vox + a more neutral source (WSJ, Reuters, etc) would make for a decent news diet.

You would be better off getting your content from mainstream news outlets than relying on podcasts, substacks, blogs etc. for factual neutral reporting. Specifically I'm referencing the news divisions of the mainstream outlets that offer actual reporting and not the opinion jockeys that dominate prime time.

The alternative news sources you mentioned are merely opinion echo chambers that serve to reinforce preconceived ideas and inflame passions rather than offering up any kind of neutral reporting.

What a lot of people find refreshing in podcasts, etc. is that they don’t hide their biases. They might tell the truth, or maybe they lie, but at least they tell you (or clearly signal) their position.

People I’ve spoken to are sick of media that pretends to be neutral, while they are clearly serving the interests of the rich. In that sense it’s really refreshing to have someone tell you what they really think.

I don’t have any solutions, but I can certainly understand the thought process.

> there’s great content on podcasts, substack, YouTube, etc.

There's almost zero shoe-leather ground truth reporting in any of those places. Is YouTube going to send a foreign correspondent to Crimea? Are podcasters going to start attending the mayor's press conferences?

Agree. But there are people who report from within Crimea who aren’t outside journalists visiting as well. The internet creates lots of access. And I guess I am separating the collection of facts, often by people like AP, from the rest of journalism, which to me has devolved into activism.

People want to be preached to by activists or advocates for the human cause. This plays a part in whatever we mean when we refer to the present-day decay of public institutions.

Respectfully, I challenge you to ask yourself how you can argue to the contrary and then say that there's great content on platforms and mediums that essentially exist to preach and serve as surrogates for certain institutions (journalism being one of them).

Humanity is at odds with objective truths (i.e., neutral facts) because the fundamentals that support contemporary notions of objectivity were erected by people with implicit biases.

The problem with journalism is that it harkens to an idea of the world that is effectively dead. Journalism is just a string upon strings keeping the marionette-corpse of modern civilization erect. Its own survival depends on Journalists convincing "consumers" that what's dead is alive or rather, just "sickly".

But people who know better are tired of being treated like "consumers".