Reuters operates more like an NGO than a private company. It’s the British version of its American equivalent AP.
Technically it’s private, but so are all NGOs. Doesn’t mean they don’t do odd politically motivated things that no normal private company would do with a plain profit motive.
Now we see here that sometimes having more than a plain profit motive is worse. It can be. It just means different. People act like having a profit motive is the worst thing possible, but it’s really not. You can do worse.
You could operate as a quasi state-sponsored news agency with connections to multiple governments and shill propaganda for them while pretending to be the very core institution of respectable journalism. But this is just a way to make the lines of “respectable journalism” equivalent to the agencies that will jump when a government says jump.
I’d argue that organizations chasing money can very closely mirror a “quasi state-sponsored news agency […] pretending to be the very core institution of respectable journalism” as you loosely put it.
I’m not specifically calling out any organization in particular, but I have come to be very cynical of almost all news sources and journalism over the last couple decades. Journalism is a hollow shell of what it once was, omission of relevant and factual context is normalized, propaganda is factualized, and people are scared to report the truth unabashedly.
There is too much incentive to spin propaganda, even with the best intentions and organizational structuring.
Reuters operates more like an NGO than a private company. It’s the British version of its American equivalent AP.
Technically it’s private, but so are all NGOs. Doesn’t mean they don’t do odd politically motivated things that no normal private company would do with a plain profit motive.
Now we see here that sometimes having more than a plain profit motive is worse. It can be. It just means different. People act like having a profit motive is the worst thing possible, but it’s really not. You can do worse.
You could operate as a quasi state-sponsored news agency with connections to multiple governments and shill propaganda for them while pretending to be the very core institution of respectable journalism. But this is just a way to make the lines of “respectable journalism” equivalent to the agencies that will jump when a government says jump.
I’d argue that organizations chasing money can very closely mirror a “quasi state-sponsored news agency […] pretending to be the very core institution of respectable journalism” as you loosely put it.
I’m not specifically calling out any organization in particular, but I have come to be very cynical of almost all news sources and journalism over the last couple decades. Journalism is a hollow shell of what it once was, omission of relevant and factual context is normalized, propaganda is factualized, and people are scared to report the truth unabashedly.
There is too much incentive to spin propaganda, even with the best intentions and organizational structuring.