The information business—whether it’s newspapers, TV news, or online platforms—is structurally no different from any other billion-dollar industry. Every successful enterprise is built around one goal: success itself. And in most cases, success means profit. Within this framework, even those who deal in news and facts begin to drift away from what should be their true purpose: to be impartial, dedicated to truth, relevance, and public service.
When information scales up into a large business, it inevitably becomes subject to pressure—commercial, political, ideological. Investors, advertisers, and ratings all shape what gets shown and how it’s framed. Covering truly important issues, diving deep into complex or uncomfortable topics, or giving space to stories that don’t “sell” becomes increasingly hard to justify. Journalism slides into entertainment. News becomes a product—packaged, simplified, and sensationalized for mass consumption. It’s show business, just like football, like Amazon, like any other market-driven entity that needs to defend its share.
Success often means prioritizing survival and growth over mission. It’s not always true, but it’s a recurring pattern. Think of a local shoemaker who lives modestly and works with passion and skill. He will likely stay true to values like quality and craftsmanship. A factory producing the same goods will, by necessity, follow different rules: efficiency, cost-cutting, scalability. The same logic applies—perhaps even more so—to information.
The core issue is this: free and independent information has a cost, but people want it for free. And what comes for free is rarely truly free. It’s paid for with attention, with personal data, or through narratives shaped to serve business interests more than public interest.
There are still exceptions—media outlets that preserve integrity, local newsrooms that resist the tide. But the reality is sobering. The comparison that comes to mind is between a small village shop that sells a bit of everything and Amazon. How many local businesses have been forced to shut down because they couldn’t compete with the scale and convenience of a corporate giant?
The same dynamic plays out in journalism. Independent and quality-driven outlets do exist—but they’re often dismissed, even discredited. Rather than being seen as alternative or niche voices, they’re branded as sources of misinformation. Dominant media groups, like all market leaders, don’t appreciate competition—especially when it challenges their narrative or exposes their contradictions.
Local news stations and small editorial teams that aim for quality over commercial success almost always meet the same fate as the village shop: forced to close under the weight of a system built to favor the powerful.
In the end, if truth doesn’t scale, it struggles to survive. And when survival depends on scale, truth itself becomes negotiable.
