- if the money comes from the state they're incentivized to speak good of the state
- if the money comes from ads they're bound to report what does not make to many waves
- if the money comes from readers, they're going to write articles for better retention / more new subscribers
Democracy does not need the press. It needs an informed population which has learned to think critically.
I don't agree at all. There's numerous instances happening very, very frequently of the press shaping public events sometimes only by their revelation of an ongoing investigation. An informed, critical thinking population won't/can't do investigative work.
I think a lot of these comments are trivializing the situation in Hungary. The point is that if the government has shut down the last newspaper independent of it (even though maybe not of ads) then they will shut down any public speech independent of it and then you cannot have a population informed about how it is being governed (whatever about being informed about consumer choice which is a bit more trivial)
As the case of Cambridge Analytica shows most people overestimate their ability to think critically. We do need reputable sources of information, otherwise we're just a manipulable flock.
