Margaret Sullivan of WaPo remarks on the latest trend on how to rate news sources:
Entrepreneur Elon Musk thinks journalism needs fixing, and he’s got just the answer.
Enraged last week by negative media coverage of Tesla, his car company, the tech billionaire proposed a rating system in which the public would vote on the credibility of individual journalists and news sites.
As with all things Musk, the sketchy idea brought rave reviews from his obsessive fans, even though his explanations (by tweetstorm) of how journalism works show that he’s way out of his depth.
“Problem is journos are under constant pressure to get max clicks & earn advertising dollars or get fired. Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn’t advertise, but fossil fuel companies & gas/diesel car companies are among world’s biggest advertisers.”
It doesn’t work that way. Journalists are not under pressure to earn ad dollars through their news stories and in fact go out of their way not to write favorably — or at all — about their company’s advertisers.
The obvious problem with Musk’s idea is that voting is easily contaminated by entities with agendas that have little to do with honest evaluation of these media entities. Either he’s not thought it through, or he’s being quite dishonest because, as Margaret notes, he’s angry at the news coverage.
The hidden problem with Musk’s idea is that we’re asking people with no skin in the game to play. What is their motivation to act honestly?
None.
The best way to evaluate the worthiness of a news source is finding subscribers who are willing to put up some cold, hard cash to not only buy the news, but to also invest their time, one our most precious commodities in today’s busy world, to read that news.
The act of subscribing to a paper is a contract and a conversation between the subscribers and the people who are trained to be journalists concerning the news events of the day. By paying that buck directly to the news media, you’ve gained the right to criticize their methods, or compliment them, to give them tips, and to learn what’s happening in your community and world-wide. It’s a contract about delivering news, about honesty – going both ways.
All those free sources that you and I sup at, have you thought about them? Why should they pay attention to you? To honesty? Their funding comes from advertising. Not that the subscription services don’t also benefit from advertising, but because subscribers demand a certain level of honest journalism, the influence of the advertisers is mitigated – and, if they do have undue influence, that can be detected and corrected by subscribers complaining, and walking away if necessary.
So think about those free news sources we all read, HuffPo and Vox and USA Today and Fox News and CNN. Are they really as substantial as the struggling hometown newspaper that Margaret writes about, perhaps in a death spiral even as we speak? Or are they more like McDonald’s and Burger King, all sodium and greasy french fries which seems so tasty … and will ultimately kill you?
