Why YSK: good journalism has a lot of costs (and not one-time-only), in time if not in money, so if any “news” source isn’t at least trying to get paid somehow*, then it indicates that the supply at zero price exceeds the demand (it is a “free good”), which means one of two things:
Edit: After a lot of discussion and some more thought on my part, I am no longer sure that a single binary choice captures all the possibilities here. The concept of a “free good” is a standard one in economics, with essentially the definition I gave above, and it is still true that most journalism comes with significant costs (and not just in money). So, if there is no effort being made to recover that cost (e.g. by asking for charitable donations, or some other significant material contributions like volunteer work), then I don’t see how that “journalism” can be legitimate.
The point I was trying to make is that, e.g., internet sites that claim to offer vast amounts of easy, “quality” information (and it is questionable what that even means), on a regular, ongoing basis, but ask absolutely nothing from anyone in return, are likely some kind of scam. Because, if that were actually true, then they would have no way of actually supporting themselves on a long-term basis. Some people don’t care about long-term sustainability, of course, but they don’t tend to stay around for very long.
Original text follows.
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a lot of people like and use it but the publisher, or someone backing them, is still paying the substantial costs associated with investigating/researching, editing, and hosting it (and are arguably being quite charitable), or
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not many people find it useful or access it often, but it is still being offered/promoted by someone who has some other motive (not necessarily nefarious, but also not all that charitable).
If the latter, but they still publish timely coverage of “newsworthy” events, which would otherwise make a lot more people want to read it, then they are likely may be (edited) “tabloid”/“propaganda”/“yellow journalism”/“clickbait”/“listicle”/whatever term people are using today for “not a very credible news source”.
* Even if that’s through asking for charitable donations, though that unfortunately is often not very successful despite the fact that, one might argue, when you benefit and have the financial means to pay but don’t, then that is unethical.
Also, note that the existence of barriers to unfettered use can be considered a kind of “price” (from the “buyer’s” perspective at least), which is both annoying and can serve to limit the “quantity demanded”, making it easier to keep the “quantity supplied” high enough to meet the demand.
Instigate already gave what they called exceptions, but I mostly think are actually some examples of 1):
I haven’t listened to the Australian ABC, but I have spent some time listening to all those others, and I think they have all been pretty good, at least at some times in the past.
And even though we are primarily talking about formal news organizations, not free software specific stuff, since we are using free software I would like to at least mention that the FSF and other free software publishers and advocates (like the EFF, and even some the FSF has significant disagreements with, like Debian) can be good sources on a lot of things too, and for the most part are charities.
As examples of 2), keeping in mind that I did not say they are all inherently bad, just that a lot of people don’t think they are very useful or don’t use them much, and they do not primarily exist for charitable reasons, I would cite some state-funded nonindependent broadcasters like VoA/RFE/RL, Xinhua, RT/Sputnik, etc.
Edit: But apparently I did say if they also publish timely news, then they are “likely … not a very credible news source”. Crap. I’m gonna change that “likely” to “may
notbe”.I don’t understand how “a lot of people like and use it” from 1) precludes “it is still being offered/promoted by someone who has some other motive” from 2) being true for the same outlet.