CNN has announced that they will be erecting a paywall for their online news content. How they thought this was a great idea is anyone’s guess.
Here’s a pop quiz for you: what’s the fastest way to completely destroy your reputation as a news organization? For me, the answer is fire your entire news writing staff and replace that staff with AI. That idea has led to plenty of organizations losing their credibility overnight.
The second fastest way? Walling off your content and erecting a paywall. Over the last couple of decades, news organizations have contemplated doing precisely that. Almost every single time, such efforts end in disaster. News organizations wind up failing over the medium or long term because when the paywalls go up, users tend to go elsewhere to a news source that does have information available for free. The paywalls leading to the demise of news organizations are well documented. In fact, the failure rate is so high, any news organization that knee caps themselves with a paywall and manages to not go bankrupt is viewed as an overwhelming success in the industry.
One example I’m aware of is the New York Times. They did erect a paywall for their news content and, well, they are still around. People often point to that publication and say, “See? Paywalls lead to success!” Yet, it’s hard to really consider the New York Times as being all that relevant in today’s news world. Sure, you might get the odd journalist regurgitating whatever that publication happens to write from time to time, but that source hasn’t really been all that relevant for at least a decade now.
This leads to another major point. That is the quality of journalism for mainstream sources has tanked over the years. What might have been biting or bleeding edge news content has largely been replaced by advertising masquerading as news, click bait, low quality opinion pieces passing themselves off as high quality news, and outright disinformation. It’s gotten so bad that mainstream news outlets are more associated with the political party they happen to back rather than a source that can hold power to account. They’ve become widely viewed as the cheer leading sections for major political parties where they either attack another party for the smallest dumbest things or blast article after article trying to defend their own personal favourite political party. This is not what news is supposed to be about, yet that is exactly the monster we are dealing with in this day and age.
One great example I’ve been seeing lately is the term “sane washing”.
When president Joe Biden went into his first debate with convicted felon, Donald Trump, he, at one point, stuttered. For the mainstream media, they latched onto that little stutter and blew the whole situation out of proportion. For weeks, they ran story after story about how Biden was mentally unfit for office and how he is really old. This despite the fact that Trump is also incredibly old and his talking is also filled with stuttering, wandering into seemingly senile rants about completely fabricated things all the time. The media, however, seemingly gave Trump a free pass on all that and continued attacking Biden. Eventually, the mainstream media finally got what they wanted and forced Biden out of the race.
Now, it would only be fair if Trump got subjected to the same scrutiny. Might be a little late now that Biden is out of the race, but it would at least be fair. Yet, that’s exactly what didn’t happen. Now that a much younger Kamala Harris is running on the Democratic ticket, you don’t hear a peep from the media about how old Trump is. Think about it, when have you ever heard the media have a serious discussion about Trump’s age and whether that hinders his ability to lead the country? Personally, I don’t recall anything like that in a major media outlet. Age is suddenly no longer an issue.
What’s more, if you’ve ever really watched any of Trump’s speeches, you can’t help but notice the random rants he goes on, spreading lies and disinformation, constantly going off topic, and being incomprehensible. Yet, for the mainstream media, all you hear is crickets. Where’s the talk about Trump’s mental acuity? Where’s the hard questions about Trump’s mental capacity to lead the country? Again, crickets. Democrat leaders have to abide by one standard while Republican leaders have to abide by a much lower different standard.
During the Harris Trump debate, things did come to a head when Trump made up a completely fabricated story about immigrants eating the cats and dogs. The accusations were completely fabricated, but served to help fuel racism in the country. What’s worse, the city that was targeted by these racist comments has had to deal with over 30 bomb threats as a result of those comments. At most, you got explanations for why those accusations weren’t true and that it has harmed the Haitian community. I don’t recall ever seeing Trump being accused of being irresponsible by the media, nor do I recall the media saying that Trump is unfit for office. Just efforts to more or less sweep this scandal under the rug more than anything else. Just a, “Golly gee wilkers, I guess that’s just politics for ya!” before moving on to the next story.
It gets worse for less famous speeches by Trump as well. In some instances, Trump makes a speech on immigration where he goes on rambling about whatever nonsense he thinks of off the top of his head, spews lies all over the place, makes incomprehensible statements, then leaves the podium. For the media, they do whatever they can to “summarize” his statements by completely reworking what he said by saying things like, “Trump spoke about his stance on tightening up immigration laws.” As a result, they cover up all the lies, deceit, and overall insanity by Trump and make it sound like he made a speech that was clear and understandable – even though it was anything but.
This is a great example of sane washing. What’s more, plenty of people have been noting these actions by the mainstream media. The mainstream media have shot back, arguing that they aren’t sane washing Trump, but instead, just innocently trying to accurately describe the world around them (despite never affording that same level of leniency when talking about Biden during this US election). It’s an explanation so comical, it could be mistaken for satire.
So, why bring up sane washing? It points to a much broader problem with the mainstream media these days. The repeated failures to do their job in seeking a deeper understanding in the world around them don’t go unnoticed. Heads of the major media outlets might view their readers, listeners, or viewers as stupid, but people do notice the degraded quality of their output and will, sooner or later, start speaking with how they choose to spend their time.
The erosion of trust in the media has been well documented and the debates surrounding things like link taxes, Section 230 reforms, online harms, social media, video games, and age verification laws are other areas in which the mainstream media repeatedly fails at their jobs. Rather than understand technology and how people use the internet, online services end up being subjected to hit pieces chock full of misleading claims and outright disinformation. Technology has repeatedly been demonized over the years as something that will either destroy livelihoods or bring about the end of democracy. This despite little evidence to support such claims and far more evidence pointing to societal problems, in general, being a cause for some of societal headaches these days.
This is easily at the heart of the problem for why the media is struggling to remain viable. Accuracy in mainstream media reporting has plummeted, and people are sick and tired of it. As a result, people are leaving in droves either to sources that are actually capable of doing the job (sources like Freezenet) or just abandoning news altogether because they just can’t stand it anymore. Frankly, who can blame them? The situation with the mainstream media and accuracy in reporting is absolutely awful right now. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just the reality of where things stand today.
Yet, for mainstream media, there is a massive effort to deny this reality. They will scream until they are blue in the face that they are the only ones that can be trusted. They are the best this world has to offer. In fact, they are perfect in every way. After all, they do nothing wrong and have never done anything wrong. Anyone who dare criticizes them are either stupid ungrateful fucks or part of a grand conspiracy (probably with throwing in the term “Big Tech”) to bring them down and, therefore, has malicious intent. After all, in their reality bubble, they are the defenders of democracy and the good guys in a world where they are surrounded by bad guys all over this evil democracy killing thing called “the internet”. Anyone who questions that is subject to demands to lawmakers to have them arrested and thrown in jail. After all, how else are we supposed to defend democracy if we can’t silence those that disagree with us?
So, in a way, it doesn’t surprise me that the spreadsheet pushers and MBA’s behind CNN managed to come to the conclusion that the problem isn’t with their degraded quality product, their plummeting relevance, or the reality that we live in a digital age where people thrive in the free flow of information. No, the reason why they are losing money hand over fist is because it’s the audience that’s wrong and if they keep letting people view their advertisements, well, that’s just a problem that must be solved. So, what to do with all of this? Erect a pay wall, of course! From The Wrap:
CNN will introduce a “metered” paywall early next month for online readers, part of a broader plan by chairman/CEO Mark Thompson to restructure the news giant into profitability.
The plan was first reported Thursday by the New York Times. A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.
The metered paywall will require frequent users to pay for access after clicking on a set number of articles. The model is common among major news outlets, including the New York Times and the New Yorker.
CNN first hinted at the plan in July, when it said it would be launching a digital subscription service as a part of a restructuring that included the layoffs of some 100 staffers. Details were not disclosed, but sources who spoke with the Times indicated CNN will start with a low-cost option.
I honestly rarely, if ever, find myself reading CNN these days. The sources I do use also rarely, if ever, use CNN as a source. So, honestly, if I can never read CNN ever again, I struggle to think how I would notice a difference.
The ironic part is the mention of how CNN launched their streaming service known as CNN+ and that… didn’t work out too well:
The subscription model got a dry run two years ago when the network launched the CNN+ streaming service with exclusive content. The service was discontinued when Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s newly merged parent company, decided it was too costly.
The reason why streaming services are struggling financially is because of enshittification, among other things. The quality of the content drops, the quantity of that content dries up as feature after feature gets pulled, then the rates get jacked up, thus demanding already financially strapped consumers to spend even more on their services. Sooner or later, something gives and people drop out. It’s a big reason why so many of these services are failing.
Now, CNN is expecting consumers to pay again to regularly access their news website? On what planet did anyone think this was even a remotely good idea? It really adds a dimension to this. CNN decided that a pay service would be successful with CNN+. The service was a failure and, as a result, burned their hand on the stove. So, the lesson learned for CNN? Well, maybe touching the stove again will yield a completely different result, lets paywall our news articles! After all, expecting a different result is the only rational thing to do these days, right?
At any rate, this is just a really dumb move. I get some people justifying it by saying that it only affects repeated viewers, but at minimum, it’s a step in the wrong direction that will invariably bite them. It fails to address the core issues facing mainstream media in general and, instead, just randomly plucks a solution out of the blue and assumes that CNN will be different when so many other paywalls have failed spectacularly.
On the plus side, free sites like us will probably end up benefiting. As I said, when faced with paywalls, users tend to look elsewhere. Freezenet, of course, is a great alternative if you are into technology. So, if we see more viewers, well, thanks CNN for being complete morons. I appreciate all the help you send my way!
