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Why does tech reporting seem so bad now?
(lemmy.nowsci.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Actually I think journalistic quality has degraded overall. Not just in technical sites.
The BBC here in the UK I generally counted on well written (if not always technically accurate) articles.
Over the last 10 years or so (maybe longer) this has degraded to articles which have clearly not been proof read.
I put it down to the fact that they need to put out so much content now that proper proof reading isn't possible. I also think in general there's a reliance on spell and grammar checking in software.
Whenever I see people complaining about the quality of journalism I wonder how many of them pay for their news. Journalism isn't free, if they don't get funding from readers then they need to cut costs or get funding from companies and then it becomes tricky to talk against said companies.
I do pay for the BBC.
You realise their funding has been cut repeatedly since 2010? 1bn £ a year from 2017 to 2022.
This decline started long before 2017, but that's not even what we're discussing. If funding is being cut, all that does is shift some of the blame.
But who was at fault wasn't the topic of discussion. The fact is standards are dropping and it's noticeable.
Yes, I mentioned "since 2010", I gave some numbers I could find without wasting the time to find all cuts since 2010.
That's exactly what we're discussing, media budgets going down affects the quality of the work the employees can do and the quality and quantity of employees they can hire.
Radio-Canada used to have their own journalists everywhere in the world, now they have a couple here and there and resort to using contractors when required, why? Their budget got dilapidated.
All medias use articles from the Associated Press more and more because it's cheaper than having their own journalists.
Cost cutting measures are taken all over the place. Add the fact that people don't read the articles anymore because they barely spend enough time on the page to read the title (if they don't just check it from the Google result of from their Facebook feed), the fact that people turn to "alternative journalists" who don't have any ethics code or quality standards plus the people who don't read at all and just check YouTube videos instead... The only way to get their attention isn't with facts but with sensationalism and the only way to increase their budget is by getting clicks and that happens by catching people's attention, not by reporting facts and not by releasing few high quality articles late after the fact. Readers want the news now, as it happens, no time for fact checks or corrections!
No wonder there's a media crisis that affects all serious medias, the way they traditionally did there job would lead to their death today.
This we can agree on. But the point isn't so much why, I can't do much more than pay what I always did for the BBC. It's more just the annoyance that what used to be a great institution (some will argue) has been run into the ground this way.
It's probably the same with the degradation of most services now. The race to the bottom is the result of the average person always buying the cheapest option.
The full service airlines for short haul are mostly now offering the same services as low cost for example.
It's a strange time we live in, at least from my point of view.
Well for media funded by the state we at least have the power to vote for parties that don't want to defund them, so that's that. For private media, well, they'll always thrive to make more profit so yeah, race to the bottom 🤷
Journalism in general has been in a steady decline since the death of printed media. The last time I remember reading any kind of news worth a shit about anything other than current world wide events, was back when magazines and newspapers were the primary source of new info.
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works: Other than political and world wide events, which I can get free from the sources every paid website draws from in the first place, hobbiest journalism is also on decline and I don't typically see news outlets for a lot of hobbies even having a subscription option.