Your Commie overlords made sure to avoid telling you about a long tradition of investigative journalism in the public interest--the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate investigations, even one of the Watergate journalists talking to Trump and him admitting his lies about the pandemic.
Local journalists break stories about con artists, bad businesses, crooked politicians, unfairness, poor schools, environmental problems.
Making money by HONEST reporting is possible. The [i]New York Times,[/i] [i]Washington Post,[/i] and other newspapers have done it; [i]The New Yorker[/i] and other magazines have done it; network television (CBS, NBC, ABC) have done it. And PBS on the TV side and NPR on the radio side are Federal examples of journalism in the public interest which is usually replicated at the state level.
Does China report on how it steals intellectual property? Does it report on the artificial islands it has made? Does it report on how it simply fails to control its North Korean little brother, a countrt which starves its people and is run by an idiot madman? Does it report accurately on Tianamen Square? Or how it is violating its promises regarding Hong Kong? Or how it treats Tibet? How it grabbed and probably killed an important Lama in Buddism? How about how it is destroying other ethnic minorities? Does it tell how it tries to control what its people can even access on the internet?
Does it report how Chinese peasants traded an Emperor for a vindictive oligarchy?
Does it explain how billionaires are harmonious with Communist philosophy? What does Mao's [i]Little Red Book[/i] say about that?
And yes, independent artists are still funded through patrons, through commissions of works, through requests for proposals, through grants & other funding from organizations/non-profits, through competitions & exhibitions, and through the National Endowment for the Arts.
Guess you should actually do some of your own investigative journalism before quoting the Party line, Comrade.
The press is just as free as it's ever been in the us. You simply cannot use hate speech, no matter how much you believe in it.
This journalistic integrity you speak of used to be a thing and still is among some. But networks weren't making enough money from news, so they made it more interesting. And advertisers weren't making enough money from news, so they bordered on salacious. And TV stations weren't making the ratings from news, so they run after the most colorful and interesting story they can find regardless of its relevance. America's need for instant gratification led to 24-Hour a day news. It's a big planet, but in a culture that covers only its own shores, that's precious few stories to stretch into days and days and days.
And so we end up with opinion entertainment rather than journalism. One is water cooler talk, and the other is factual information.
All news outlets want true stories, and love to break major stories, because it gives them an edge in what they charge for advertising, status, awards, and draws MORE talent to write MORE good stories.
Go back to your Chinese overlords and tell them you failed.
So who decides which "presses" get funded and which ones don't? Can I get paid fulltime to write all day about my dog and my garden? Would I be allowed to use my 'free press' to threaten people with bodily harm? To organize a prison break? There are probably a lot more questions like these, but they are a start.
@Stopmakingsense We've decided which for-profit media companies deserve public money and which ones other for-profit media companies have to fend for themselves?
