>>SNIP
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>>>The sole objective of any corporate media outlet today is maximized profit. When it was bought by ??? the Los Angeles Times had a steady year-to-year profit of 20%. The buyers saw big potential for cost savings and started doing so. 4 years later the paper is but a shadow of its former self and the new ownership has pressed to make it a strictly local paper to cut even more. They see no problem in suggesting that their readers should buy 2-3 newspapers daily - one for national/world news, one for financial news and the L.A. Times for local news. Imagine!!!
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>>I strongly disagree with the first sentence. The concept of reporting the news as a public service is far from dead, even if it has been dealt a few body blows.
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>Why do you disagree? If you can say that there are CORPORATE outlets that place getting all the news and vetting it AHEAD of profits I'll send in the SEC and the FBI because those outlets would be in breach of their fudiciary duties to shareholders!
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>Keep in mind that there's no law against lying to the public, at least as far as the media is concerned. So their spokesmen may say certain things, but that doesn't make them true by default.
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>SNIP


That isn't the way the news business has historically worked. There is supposed to be a "Chinese wall" between the news side and the business side. Reporters and editors are responsible for what goes into the paper and are not supposed to be influenced by company profitability or politics. For example, if the publisher of the paper (or owner of the TV station, etc.) is involved in a scandal, that is news and should be covered just like it was the CEO of Enron. On the other side of this imaginary wall are top management, accountants, lawyers, and other functions that exist in any business. They are the ones responsible for profitability. The organization as a whole is not derelict in pursuing profit. It's just that news coverage is not supposed to be influenced by it. The line gets a little blurry sometimes, as we all know, and in varying degrees in different news organizations, but that's still the idea.