Quality journalism costs money. Period.
Sometimes it’s ads, sometimes it’s asking for an email address, sometimes it requires a subscription. The bottom line is good reporting is not free.
There’s also a million and one ways to bypass most paywalls that require very little effort (assuming you bother to put forth that minimum effort rather than whining “PaYWaLLEd!” in the comments). Sometimes it’s just a soft paywall (daily article limits, regional locking, etc), but some people still can’t help but whine about it and demand you accommodate them (while refusing to put forth any effort to obtain the information themselves).
“Just post an archive link instead” I often hear.
That’s a terrible solution (and Lemmy UI’s worst feature), and here’s why:
Astronauts Land on Moon: Discover It Really IS made of cheese
Source: archive.ph/abcdefg
Just scrolling through your feed: Is that headline from a reputable source or some trash tabloid, troll farm, or crazy person’s blog?
Should it be believed, taken seriously, or given more than 1/2 second thought? Is it even worth clicking into the article at all?
It’s absolutely impossible to tell because its source is obfuscated with an archive.ph link which tells you nothing about where the headline comes from.
People scroll and just absorb headlines as fact, adding that little tidbit of information to their collective knowledge. I do it, you do it, we all do it. I get it: we’re busy with lives and can’t read every article that gets posted. I’m not shaming the practice.
Having the canonical source of news headlines apparent goes a long way to combating misinformation by giving context to the headline’s credibility, letting you know where the information is coming from, and what, if any, agenda it may be pushing. Obfuscating the sources removes all of those protections in a “trust me, bro, this is legit” kind of way.
It should not be on the poster to accommodate everyone’s tinfoil-hat reasons. If they prefer an alternate source, that is 100% on them to deal with.
PS: For those of you posting quality news with the official links and not kowtowing to the “pAyWAllEd!” crowd, I thank and salute you.
…what??? You’re over here making a long ass rant, that people should go out of their way, jump through hoops, to reach an article behind a paywall…when the vast vast vast majority of America doesn’t even read the full headline.
I’d like to quote Bo Burnham here.
If America is too lazy to read, what makes you think you yelling at them to jump through hoops will combat the misinformation this country has a problem with?
The reason we have misinformation is because Bob doesn’t read. Then he catches a glimpse of a building blowing up on the news. He’s at the bar. He can’t hear the story, but he thinks he knows that building.
So then he goes to work drunk, and tells Jim:
And now, Jim is on Facebook telling everybody that Muslims are not to be trusted, because they just blew up his apartment building.
Then Jim goes home, and finds his apartment perfectly intact. There never were terrorists on his street. What Bob saw was a short CGI enhanced clip of a new movie coming out, and that “building” is actually just a soundstage set mixed with CGI.
Jim doesn’t take down his Facebook post. So now Janice replies how Muslims are ruining the neighborhood.
And now there’s a whole hate group going, all based on misinformation. But at no time did any of them even attempt to clarify the story, use critical thinking, or question any of it. Everybody just piled on, and added, and created this ficticious story that they are now legitimately calling for hate speech over.
The fact is, everybody lives in their own self created echo chamber. A self realized personal reality if you will.
YOU may seek out the full stories, but thats just you creating your echo chamber. Listening to the stories YOU trust. Based on others reporting.
Someone else may only watch Fox News. Another person may only read The LizardMan times. A completely fictional news outlet that I just made up, which only reports conspiracies.
Then theres me. I intentionally DON’T read or watch any news. I don’t read the articles. I read the comment sections. Because I find it a much clearer and broader set of agendas if I process the reactions, rather than the story itself. I don’t care which news sources you allow in your bubble. Each and every one of them have a different agenda. There is NO unbiased news in the modern day. Argueably there never was.
But individuals don’t have agendas. The problem with this though, is that THEIR sources do. So while individual people may not have an intentional agenda, they’re influenced by those that do.
A somewhat decent remedy for this, years ago, is to take in conversations from both sides conversing. An exchange of ideas. But even that’s falling apart these past 10 years. There is no such thing as “the right” anymore. Only the far right. People who are knowingly voting for a man who is pretty blatently intentionally causing harm to our country.
The left still exists, but it’s also increasingly becoming the far left.
So rather than a calm disagreement and exchange of ideas, two conflicting sides instead now resorts to insults, personal attacks, hate speech, and even death threats. So it’s just a whole bunch of insanity. Which really defeats the purpose of filtering out the agenda through people.
And now, you see how vastly different my view is it on yours, and hopefully you can see how others opinions would be vastly different to either one of ours. Opinions, and viewpoints are a spectrum. Expecting everybody to follow your spot on the spectrum is NEVER going to happen. No matter how rational or how insane your position is, theres always someone with an insane opposite end position on the spectrum.
I think a better way to combat misinformation would be to pass laws that news outlets can be held accountable in court if they knowingly and willingfully spread misinformation.
As for Bob, Jim, and Janice, there’s always going to be idiots in the world. But if we hold them legally liable for hate speech, death threats, and racism, then they’ll only do those things in private. Which reduces their visability, which leads to a lack of promotion of these ideas.
And hopefully all of this together should lead to the other side at least becoming reasonable again. Because I can converse with someone with different political beliefs, who is willing to discuss them. Sometimes you even learn something new, or see it from their side.
What I CANNOT engage with, is a person set in their ways. Unable to discuss. Unwilling to engage beyond a set of manufactured talking points presented to them by their news source of choice, with no wiggle room for new ideas.
The problem isn’t access to news articles. The problem is stuborness and lack of critical thinking as our public education system has slowly but continuously been dismantled since the days of Nixon.