The Bellwether for American State Media
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Yesterday, Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post and Amazon, refused to let the WaPo editorial staff endorse Kamala Harris as they intended. Instead, they will not be endorsing anyone — for the first time in 30 years!
Is Bezos aware their motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness?” Is he afraid of becoming enemy #1 in a potential Trump presidency? Is this all about $$$ and Amazon sales? One can only guess.
When I started my business 20 years ago, essentially a travel blog, everyone clutched their pearls about me charging for content — so I didn’t. 20 years later, it seems that 50% or more of verifiable news and quality content is paywalled (either subscription or platform membership).
How did this happen? Facebook and Google simply cannibalized local ad sales. The local news outlets needed a way to keep the doors open. Solution? Go 100% digital and create paywalls. Think about it — when’s the last time you read a physical newspaper?
You can’t even watch most TV news now without paying for a plan or streaming subscriptions to multiple networks to hear different perspectives. Between Max (CNN access), Spectrum (Local news, MSNBC, and FOX access) and a few YouTube subscriptions, the bill could run you easily $50-$150 per month.
And now we’re regularly seeing bigger networks acquire the smaller ones. Half the time I have no idea how to find what I want to watch, what time it is on and what my password is. Talk about barriers to being informed! Oh how I long for the days of “TV Guide!”
Youtube pundits are still finding success with premium content subscriptions but how long will that last? A few years back they significantly increased their threshold minimums on subscribers and pageview counts just to qualify for content monetization — so only the bigger popular news show streamers take in most of the revenue.
I’m sure there will be more hoops to jump through for content creators as soon as Google, who owns Youtube, figures out how to capture more of the pie.
If the news is only accessible to those that can afford it and you have an ignorant undereducated populace, that can’t be a good thing for a Democracy.
“Fake news,” “alternative facts,” “mainstream media” — all Trumpian era terms meant to cast doubt on and undermine good hard-nosed journalism. And Trump, who calls the media covering him “the enemy of the people,” is ramping up that rhetoric as we near closer to election day.
Not so coincidentally, I noticed that the one reporter, who covers my small town news, only writes stories that paint our Republican mayor, his friend, in a very complimentary light — ahead of the legislator running for re-election.
Combine all of this together and you have a bellwether for State Media. It’s not coming. It’s here. Vote accordingly.
What can we do to protect our Free Press? Ideas welcome in the comments. p.s. I have to pay $5.00 a month to Medium so you can read this, so I will be monetizing this story in hopes to make that $5.00 back. Once I do, I’ll make it FREE! LOL! ;)
