Dan

I didn't think this felt appropriate in any specific existing thread, but if mods disagree, feel free to move it accordingly.

The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free
by Nathan J. Robinson
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/...lies-are-free/

He goes on...


This is something I've noticed as well... it's very easy to come across all the blogs and faux-news type of sites spouting pure bullshit on contentious topics, typically poorly sourced or intentionally misrepresented, while the sites that do true deep-dives with factual information are locked behind a paywall. It's really frustrating, especially right now, but it's hard not to see how this dynamic is working to benefit the lies and liars over the real information.

The writer goes on to offer a solution; an open and democratic universal search, not driven by ad sales. But I'm not sure it's possible.
I wonder if, instead, sites that have paywalls on some content should 'flip' their policy; use the paywall for simpler pieces (Opinion, Sports, Entertainment, Culture, etc.) and use that to fund the ability to keep real journalistic news free and available to all who want to read it. That would probably backfire, though.

Anyway, I thought this was worth discussing, and I'll pose a question to the forum members who have bothered to click on this post: Putting aside streaming services, what sites (news or otherwise) do you actually pay for, and do you feel it has been worth it?

JackoOnHisBacko

If this is true, then the story must be behind a paywall, right?

Dan

Hilarious!
Also, no.

JackoOnHisBacko

I was only joking.

Dan

I know

GoVegan

I've noticed this as well and it's definitely frustrating. Of course, I can't really complain as I'm not paying for any news at the moment.

It comes up every day, though. Every time my phone recommends an article I'd actually want to read it's behind a paywall and every time I only want to read it out of incredulity, it's free.

wendersfan

Yeah, it's a problem. I currently subscribe to The New York Times (print and digital), The Washington Post (digital only), print editions of The New Yorker and The New Republic, a digital subscription to The Atlantic, and it really adds up. I'd love to get The Economist as well, but that's another $200/year, which is a big ask. I will mention that I think The Guardian is still free and has excellent journalism, as does The Independent.

TheBigDave

Sometimes you can read the article using these sites:

https://outline.com/
https://www.printfriendly.com/

Mabuse

Would this hot trump interview being only on HBO an example of this phenomenon?

fujishig

Isn't this the full interview?


I think most of the Axios stuff they do, along with John Oliver, are pretty much free on youtube (or maybe there are ads?)

Also I think at least some newspapers kept the covid information outside of the walls, but I'm not sure if that's the case universally. It's tough because I'm sure a lot of money and research goes into gathering the info for this news and that costs money, while spouting your opinion about something on the internet or facebook doesn't.

Dan

^ not really.. you can watch the whole thing on YouTube on the official HBO account I guess. This is more about in-depth reporting, though... not interviews. There are journalistic sites that don't keep such things behind a paywall, but the content of the Current Affairs piece is about things reported on the most high profile sites; some that report news and the others that report lies.

fujishig

The example of a white supremicist (I don't even know how to spell that) on Youtube is countered by dozens of other free Youtube videos, though.

If the issue is truly about knowledge, then the issue is not just about paywalls but about where people are going to find their news (Facebook?), what they trust, and how inclined they are to even seek out alternative viewpoints as opposed to people who are politically and morally aligned with them. Like if everything was free, is a racist (easier to spell) really going to read an in depth article about race relations?

Dan

But I'm not sure that's the same thing. Yes, there are many YouTube videos that provide excellent retorts to that kind of stuff, but they're not, dare I say, trusted journalistic endeavors. That doesn't mean they're bad, but I think there's a mental barrier to accepting that one YouTuber's retort is of a higher journalistic standard than another YouTuber's misinformation. You do make a good point, though...

Maybe, but probably not. But I think it's about getting people whose minds are open to understanding the nuance of a complicated situation. Someone against the ACA may have their mind changed by a well-sourced piece from a trusted news outlet. Same goes for UBI, or tax cuts/increases, or as you put it, race relations. To your point, I think some folks are dead-set in their racism, but I also think there is a large portion of people who are simply uninformed or misinformed by what some racial statistics actually mean in the greater scheme of things. You can't talk about crime rates without talking about what leads to crime, for example, and what leads to crime isn't always selfishness/greed/anarchy* but poverty contrasted with generational wealth, among other things. I genuinely think people are open to reading about that stuff, but when so much of it is locked behind paywalls, it's harder to convincingly give the arguments more weight. But it's all about the reader/viewer, I think, and what they can accept or not accept as reasonable explanations for why things are the way they are.


*no, anarchy does not equal crime. But some folks seem to think all anarchists are criminals.

fujishig

But if you're someone inclined to believe any source, I'm not sure that a source with more journalistic integrity or carefully researched and cited documentation is going to sway you all that much. Basically, if you're getting your news solely from Facebook and believe everything on there, are you really going to read a long article or report on something that goes against your beliefs? Maybe if you're in school and you're forced to or something. Otherwise there are probably (maybe not, I haven't counted them) just as many well reasoned sources of information on, say, race relations that are free as there are that argue against it that are free. Even for scientific research, you'll have free and well reasoned analysis of studies that you might not necessarily have access to (and even if you did it would be very difficult to understand).

This is before you even get into the whole "fake media" stuff which makes people doubt what media can be trusted, sourced or not.

I guess my question is, how do you get people to seek out new avenues of information, stuff that may open their mind to things they have never thought about, whether or not it's free?

Mark_vdH

The thing is that it doesn't cost too much t produce anything shitty. And because people iin conspiracy circles flock towards one place, sites like Fox and Breitbart can maintain their sites without a paywall. Oh, and perhaps their visitors are generally more susceptible to clcik on ads.

I only have a paid subscription to the Washington Post's site.

Mabuse

I didn’t realize. Thanks. When I hear HBO I think it’s for $$$

GreenMonkey

Good topic.

I scraped around for someone to pay for solid news given COVID in February, and scraped around for a deal, ended up going with NYT for $8/mo. I've literally never paid for a newspaper. We might have had our local paper in the early 2000s for coupons and classifieds or something, but that's probably it.

I get a lot of Washington Post paywall also; they are referenced a lot, but I'm not really interested in paying for 3 or 4 different news sites. Even paying for one seems hard to justify, since if I use some careful google-fu I can generally get the content reposted somewhere else. I know that is part of the problem, but before COVID and WFH, I got most of my news listening to NPR on my hour-long commute.

joeblow69

I've been having relatively good luck reading WaPost articles by opening them up in a private tab in firefox.

Dan

Yeah, I get exactly what you mean, and I agree that those types would not be inclined to read something they expect to disagree with from the outset.

I don't disagree, per se, but I believe the point of the Current Affairs piece is not necessarily that paid content is better than free content, but that the most well-known and popular news organizations are all putting some of their best content behind the paywall. Put another way, let's say an identical story about health care appears on SuperScienceBroBlog.com and nytimes.com. Same author, same text. If someone is looking for recent stories on health care, and they see both links, they're far more likely to hit up the NYT link, right? If they hit a paywall, they'll backtrack and see what else is available. They might check that SSBB site, but they may be more likely to just go with a different site; at least one with a name they recognize. Maybe that ends up being well-sourced too, or maybe it's total trash. But over time, individual people can become conditioned to avoid sites that have paywalls on some content, and if they're not the most discerning readers, they may end up regularly going to the sites full of misinformation.
I don't think it's about how many sites have pieces arguing for one position or the other in a reasonable way, but what kind of traction a piece in NYT can inherently get over the SuperScienceBroBlog, even if identical, and whether the SuperScienceBroBlog can gain readers when a known entity like National Review has a story on the topic too.
I mean, there are trash sites that kind of prey on this aspect. Washington Times is a good example; it sounds like a respectable name for a paper, don't you think? But it's full of a ton of nonsense. If I look up recent health care stories, and my top four hits are New York Times, Washington Post, SuperScienceBroBlog, and Washington Times, but NYT & WaPo are behind a paywall, and I don't know what the fuck this Science Bro Blog is all about, I'd be inclined to click on the Washington Times link if I didn't know any better. I think that's kind of what's at the heart of the Current Affairs piece.

Man, if any of us had the answer to this, we'd be rich! But seriously, it's a tough one. When I look up topics that I don't know much about, or if I'm looking to have my own view on a topic challenged, I'm very careful about finding a good source, precisely because it can be so easy to fall into the trap of... not just "disagreement" but outright misinformation and lies. But I know most folks do not do this. Recently, I saw someone say, "This is a good article!" and it was just a rambling facebook post. Which is... pretty much what you're talking about. So many people are unable/unwilling/unaware enough to see that kind of stuff for what it is, and I don't know how you break that bubble.
One, I think true information needs to be far more easily accessible. That means signal-boosting reliable authors who provide free analysis, but also a de-emphasis on paywalls on the more popular mainstream sites when it comes to factual journalistic reporting, somehow.
Two, content that, for lack of a better description, speaks to their sensibilities. I get a lot of.. bad... ads on YouTube, and I find them fascinating because I can tell that the target audience would eat that shit up, while ads for stuff for which I am the target audience are painfully cringe. But Ads bring people to the content, so if there's a way to use that to bring them to reading/watching more factual stuff, that could break that barrier.

grip

I typically read and receive alerts from Reuters.com. Also, PBS.org/newshour is usually solid reporting. Both do not have a paywall and provide quality journalism.

If I hear something on cnn/foxnews/msnbc I definitely would check it against reuters at the very least.

Vibiana

I subscribe to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Kansas City Star. It drives me up the wall to see people whining about paywalls. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I wrote for a living. The pay sucks. Talent is worthy of recompense. The problem with news funded entirely by ads is that it can be biased by what those advertisers want their product or service being associated with.

The AP website and Reuters offer a no paywall option and little to no bias.

story

I agree with all of that. There may not be a paywall but there's obviously other "costs" involved with these "free" sites.

I started subscribing to the daily print and digital edition of our local paper on November 9, 2016. They run a lot of AP, NYT, and Washington Post stories so I get a lot of that. I'm paying close to a dollar a day, though the rates started at like a dollar a week so I certainly don't feel ripped off. Knowing what is happening in the world is definitely a key piece of my work, so my subscription is paid put of my professional expense budget through work.

We got a digital subscription in April to the Washington Post for $29 for the first year and $100 after that, cancel anytime. It's been very worth it. Even $100/year is worth it. $8.33 per month, or 27.4 cents per day for something I use every day? That's amazing. And right now I'm paying less than 8 cents a day. Paywall?! I see it as about priorities.

tommyp007

I subscribed to the Washington Post (digital) thru Amazon a couple years back for $3.99 a month. Best $4 I spend each month.

fujishig

Hmm... how is the sub through amazon? Does it just give you a login or do you have to jump through some amazon hoops? They have a free trial and 59 bucks for a year, maybe I'll try it out.

Oh, going through them directly is only 29 for a year, or 39 for a deluxe sub (but it goes up to 100 or 150 after year one)

tommyp007

I have a username and password for the WaPo website, it’s just charged to my Amazon card each month.