i used to respect journalists but not since, like, 2018

this is in part due to the fact that journalism as an industry has taken a big nosedive

but only in part

honestly in 2024 i don’t trust anything that doesn’t operate at a loss

@Lady Hard to expect longevity from anything that does, though. (Also, so that's a no on 404?)

@aschmitz i have a small amount of respect for 404, but their primary job is still to sell copy

the only journalism i would wholly trust would be journalism that operated as an arm of a different, mission-driven, organization that i also trusted, with the understanding that the journalism was an expense in pursuit of that mission, not a revenue source

or volunteer, citizen journalism. i still think citizen journalism is important

@Lady Hmm. (Setting aside that I'm not inclined to *wholly* trust any given journalist,) good journalism costs a lot of money, so I'm not sure how practical it would be to rely on an organization that was at least an order of magnitude bigger so as to not notice the expense. (In the meantime, there are organizations like PBS/NPR that at least don't have hard requirements on subscriptions or ads, though they do both. But my NPR membership isn't reliant on them chasing clicks, either.)

@Lady There's also, like, the BBC, or other state-sponsored media organizations (though the BBC would bristle at the comparison). Heck, even VOA. Technically part of mission-driven organizations! Maybe not ones you trust though.

(I think the BBC does some good work, and some iffy work. But they do seem to have a bit less of a profit motive than at least *some* other organizations.)

@aschmitz yes, i mean, this is in part an argument along the lines of advocating for state-run media, although i don’t think anyone has figured out how to do stare-run media well yet

NPR in principle i love but in practice has to try way too hard to appear “impartial”, and their coverage has really suffered as a result. i’d rather have partisan media from an organization whose values were clearly stated, so that i could make my own evaluation on whether they were a reliable source for any given topic.