How Commercialism Degrades Journalism (original) (raw)

This chapter provides an overview of the entire American media landscape, with an emphasis on the various degradations caused by commercial imperatives. As media outlets desperately chase increasingly elusive revenues, they further debase journalism. Problems that emerge from journalism’s decline range from the turn to invasive and deceptive forms of advertising to a growing precarity in news labor. The chapter systematically goes through potential alternatives to the advertising revenue model and concludes that a public option is the best model going forward.