> And at the same time, people have gotten worse at valuing objectivity, with a bias toward news sources that reinforce their existing views.
Are you sure you have the causation in the right direction? It seems to me that the news sources have gotten less objective, thanks to takeovers by PE and wealthy individuals. I'm not interested in news sources with an explicit right-wing position, which is what the major papers in my area offer, so I don't subscribe to them.
You're right that news orgs that have fed readers' desire for bias-affirming content have done better than those that still aim, however imperfectly, to present the news objectively.
But those news orgs wouldn't thrive if not for demand, and there is quite a lot of social science research out there showing that while most people _say_ they want unbiased news, their actual consumption habits indicate a preference for news that is in line with their existing ideological bents.
Sure, I'm happy to accept "both are to blame." Your original comment placed all of the blame on readers, but I think it's important to recognize that newspapers are also to blame when they are selling a viewpoint that many readers don't want.
Are you sure you have the causation in the right direction? It seems to me that the news sources have gotten less objective, thanks to takeovers by PE and wealthy individuals. I'm not interested in news sources with an explicit right-wing position, which is what the major papers in my area offer, so I don't subscribe to them.