I don't see why that's automatically bad. Most of the "news" we consume is a sort of baseline of current events that doesn't require deep thought and is more about volume. It makes sense that this would be consolidated. It's the remaining 10% where there can be interesting nuance and opinion. Even very differently aligned news sources agree on most stuff.
Related, I get a local paper from the small town where I grew up. It represents a tiny fraction of what I read in a week, and it doesn't cover e.g. the war in Ukraine, but its that sort of thing that actually contributes to how I might experience the news differently from someone else
If you read major news networks like Fox or CNN, they have an obvious agenda, but at least they have some conflicting, if often ridiculous, views on stuff. Come to Canada if you want to see homogeneous media.
There is an outsized influence of elitist publications that normal people don't read, like NYT (is it owneed by someone in the six?), The Atlantic and similar stuff, Twitter, probably more. This is relevant because it helps set the agenda of the ruling class, so even if it's a smaller proportion, it gets an outsized influence in policy, righthink, and what trickles down to the progressive media. There may be an equivalent on the right but I don't know it. There are of course some major narratives that get pushed to rile up the right wing base as well that come from somewhere.
People on HN appear more interested in questioning the premise of the article than discussing centralization in the media
I don't see why that's automatically bad. Most of the "news" we consume is a sort of baseline of current events that doesn't require deep thought and is more about volume. It makes sense that this would be consolidated. It's the remaining 10% where there can be interesting nuance and opinion. Even very differently aligned news sources agree on most stuff.
Related, I get a local paper from the small town where I grew up. It represents a tiny fraction of what I read in a week, and it doesn't cover e.g. the war in Ukraine, but its that sort of thing that actually contributes to how I might experience the news differently from someone else
If you read major news networks like Fox or CNN, they have an obvious agenda, but at least they have some conflicting, if often ridiculous, views on stuff. Come to Canada if you want to see homogeneous media.
There is an outsized influence of elitist publications that normal people don't read, like NYT (is it owneed by someone in the six?), The Atlantic and similar stuff, Twitter, probably more. This is relevant because it helps set the agenda of the ruling class, so even if it's a smaller proportion, it gets an outsized influence in policy, righthink, and what trickles down to the progressive media. There may be an equivalent on the right but I don't know it. There are of course some major narratives that get pushed to rile up the right wing base as well that come from somewhere.
People on HN appear more interested in questioning the premise of the article than discussing centralization in the media