All News is Advertising
And what to do about it
News & Money
News is information: information that has been grown, harvested, processed and distributed; rather like food, say carrots. The carrots are grown (say) on a farm in Nuwara Eliya; they are harvested, washed and cleaned; and distributed to various consumers via various intermediaries. Similarly, a politician or their press team conceives some nugget of news. Then, some journalist harvests the sound-bite at the big-wig’s press conference. They package the blurb into a “folks, you heard it here first” tweet. And finally, Twitter beams the tweet to millions of consumers in the twitter-sphere.
More complex examples of news, say a well-researched investigative news report, is communicated by a more complicated process. Like a more complex food, like a well-balanced rice and curry plate, there are many food sources, processing happens in many places, and the distribution is more elaborate, involving many intermediaries.
But the fundamentals are the same. It is information; information that has been grown, harvested, processed and distributed.
…
News costs money, like anything harvested, processed and distributed. The politician’s press conference costs money. Journalists cost money. And giant platforms like Twitter cost a lot of money. Hence, many individuals and entities know and unknown pay for even the simplest piece of news like “She said, he said” tweet”. A well-researched investigative news report involves a far more complicated set of benefactors.
Hence, money and news go hand in glove because whoever pays for the news determines its content. And when many people pay for the news, they choose the content in proportion to how much they paid.
Subscription & Advertising
There are two ways of paying for news: a “push” model and a “pull” model.
In the “push” model, producers of information pay money to “push” information to consumers; a model also known as advertising. In a “pull” model consumers spend money to “pull” information from producers; also known as subscription.
Push and Pull are theoretical extremes. In practice, most newspapers are a mix of subscription and advertising.
…
On the one hand, Newspapers full of advertisements are more push. In addition to official advertisements, they are also full of unofficial advertisements, like sponsored stories, where a journalist writes something that looks like an article but is an advertisement. But even such media often have some aspect of subscription. For example, you might need to pay to purchase it, even if the revenue from such purchases are a small fraction of advertising income.
On the other hand, newspapers that seem to be 100% subscription (say, because there are no advertisements in sight), have hidden advertising. They might, for example, benefit from various donors, charities and foundations, and the publication might consciously or unconsciously promote the views of these.
Hence, to even a small extent, all news is advertising. Producers of information, with interests, both hidden and transparent, are pushing information towards the consumers.
Benefits & Mindfulness Aides
On the one hand, for me at least, there is something liberating by accepting the fact that “all news is advertising”. Consider the following benefits:
- One is not bothered by biased or ignorant news articles. It merely reflects the opinions and knowledge of the people paying for it. These people have a right to expression (even partial views), and ignorance (i.e. the lack of knowledge) is not a crime.
- One is not bothered by fake news, alt-facts etc. Similar to bias, phoney news simply implies that the sources of news are inclined to pathological lying. A lie is only a problem if you don’t know the liar.
…
On the other hand, this level of liberation needs an almost super-human mindfulness level when consuming news. You might know that a tweeter is a congenital idiot, but you might still, at least for a moment, be annoyed at the tweet; before your better sense kicks in and dismisses it for what it is.
Hence, for humans who (like me) are not super-humans, a few “mindfulness aides” might be helpful. The following have helped me:
- Consume news in pull mode. In other words, control what you consume, when and how. I’ve expanded on this in How I consume information.
- Know the source and who pays them. The most important thing to know about a newspaper is not how qualified or famous their journalists are, but who pays for it. You can get some sense of this from articles and advertisements run in the newspapers. However, to get a more profound sense, you’ll need to dig into more concrete financial information; like who the paper’s shareholders are, who their parent companies etc. Ideally, I’d like a “this was sponsored by or the author was sponsored by” blurb follow every article, and a disclosure on donors, shareholders and parent companies to contain each edition of a newspaper.
…
(Eh, who pays me? I write as a hobby, and hence, I’m entirely self -funded. For my “real” occupation and sources of income, see my LinkedIn profile.)
