Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
I&#x27;ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately. It seems to me that the nefarious ways in which modern media operates are responsible for a large portion of the problems we see in the world today.<p>That&#x27;s because the world in general is doing better than ever in almost any measurable parameter, yet the general notion is that everything is going to shit. This has real world consequences such as violent riots, couples deciding not to bring a child into &quot;this terrible world&quot;, depression etc.<p>The mere choice of what is news worthy and how much coverage any one item gets already warps the mind&#x27;s heuristics about how often this type of event occurs and thus how important it is. Add to that the &quot;artistic licence&quot; that reporters take (maliciously or otherwise) and the situation becomes really dire.<p>The reason for this problem is that society has decided that news should be a form of entertainment, and news outlets are for-profit companies. Considering these incentives the current state seems inevitable.<p>This has also led me to think of hypothetical solutions. I would argue that &quot;The News&quot; should be a non-profit, state funded entity (or entities). However, these must very much <i>not</i> be state controlled but rather allowed to operate independently. A similar institution is the Judicial System, which doesn&#x27;t need to worry about clickbaiting titles for its rulings in order to fund itself, yet it has, ideally, full autonomy to procecute people in power if the need arises and we (society) take any attempt of collusion between state and court to be unacceptable.<p>Similarly, an independent yet tax funded news agency can deliver boring, unentertaining news and facts to help save us from ourselves.