Everybody remember where we parked!"

- James T. Kirk

Ye Olde Reddit Pro-fyle (The Bad Place)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Removing the need for existing newspapers to rely on advertising to keep costs low enough for the consumer to be able to purchase an issue would go very far.

    The problem has always been that the academic or “platonic” ideal of journalism as this “objective, 4th estate” that “speaks truth to power” has always been at odds with the costs of doing business. In fact, the first newspapers were owned by Political Parties and wore their affiliations on their sleeves. Switching to advertiser-supported models enabled more independence from political parties in the 1800s.

    What’s also true is that most local newspapers (heck, papers in general) are at least on paper, objective in the sense that their journalists are free to pursue and write the stories they want using their professional judgment.


  • It doesn’t invalidate it. It’s accurate that for a time, privately owned, for-profit newspapers would (and did in the past) result in a multitude of viewpoints since the editorial stances will are inherently more diverse between 20 newspapers instead of 2.

    Whether or not the current vertical and horizontally integrated media companies will be broken up is irrelevant to the fact that it would result in a more diverse and freer press.

    A tax funded solution would most likely take the form of a single entity. If 4 entities dominating the press is wrong, then 1 is even worse.




  • It scales. Privately owned community newspapers might have a bias, but if there’s one in every town with 1,000 people, then exponentially that increases the amount of different agendas of each of those private entities, and they can sort of cover each other’s weaknesses. It’s the concentration and consolidation that’s the issue.

    Of course, private industry inherently wants to merge and consolidate, as is the nature of capitalist competition. So either you continually break up mergers or develop a public community newspapers that are independent of any government - its debatable how independent the BBC or CBC are.




  • The same issue applies to government-run news too. You see it with the BBC as a government owned and funded institution. It’s domestic UK news is pro-Monarchy, pro-Tory, and this is because of how it’s set up.

    Private news media, when there’s a lot of it, tends to be less biased in the end because they’re trying to compete with each other, meaning they can’t go too far in one overt political slant. When one person controls more and has a wider reach, that dynamic becomes less important as they gain greater control over where journalists go and what events they cover.

    I support public news media, but community-owned papers would avoid the monopolistic issue of either corporate consolidation or a government funded alternative.


  • You can always have it be publicly funded but managed by a non profit designated by the government, and make it organized in such a way that if a politician or government institution had a problem with some reporting, there’s nothing they can do.

    The same concerns about editorial independence and human fallacy apply in the private sector top. There has always been pressure between the editorial, marketing, and journalist parts of newspapers.





  • The point is though that DW confirms again and again that how things looked is accurate. We see a 70s Cyberman helmet in 2005, before we see the Modern Cyberman. We’ve seen the Dalek redesigns happen, and past designs all the way back to the 60s reappear.

    Sontarans are a clone race, so its not difficult to imagine changes happened to their process or gene template over time. Perhaps one day we’ll see a mixed Sontaran fleet with the short stocky guys from Series 4 and the taller ones from Classic Who and Chibnal. Perhaps Silurians have different subspecies. Those are easy, one sentence explanations, that don’t rely on scoffing at old SFX and going “well its broken already anyways”.


  • Any example I can think of I have an answer for that solves any sort of continuity issue. Events change because of actual meddling in events and in-universe continuity resets. Events contradict each other between comics and TV and movies because they for all intents and purposes, are as seperate from each other’s continuity as Star Wars and Babylon 5.

    James Bond, for instance, is a different person from each actor to have played him, in addition to the version from the novels by Ian Fleming. His backstory can change between them, drastically. It doesn’t make it in the same category as Discovery Klingons.