Journalistic Paywalls and the Death of the Free Press

Let's say you are a political leader with shitty morals, dreams of fascism, and accelerationist leanings. Your hope is to do whatever you want (along with whatever the billionaires that inform your policy want), but you need at least some support from the people, if only to prevent all-out rebellion. And if you control the information available to the common people, you then control the people. So what do you do? You purchase large amounts of stock in major news outlets that aren't reporting the types of news you approve of. You start suing news companies left and right, in an effort to bankrupt them, or at least, cause major financial damage. And this is in a world already where way too many people get what they think is "news" from social media posts.

Now imagine that you are a news company, already struggling in this environment that is uninhabitable for modern news providers. Crippled by low reader numbers, terrified of being the next company targeted by the government, but still determined to keep some of your integrity, you put up a paywall, asking for a small payment in order for readers to finish articles. The money used to come from print, but nobody reads newspapers anymore, so ads alone won't cut it. More newspapers and news magazines follow suit.

Meanwhile, the government is instituting more tariffs, cutting government benefits for the needy, and basically doing everything in their power to make living in the country too expensive for its own citizens. Our spending money (if we have any) dwindles to nothing. Debt levels climb substantially. All of a sudden, a $5 a month (or more) subscription to the news is too much money. Unfortunately, what we are left with is a dying free press and government-endorsed (and controlled) major news sources.

The only reason Dilate doesn't have a paywall is because I am lucky enough to have a day job that pays the bills. But I don't have the resources to hire reporters to go out and investigate stories. I, too, rely on access to news without a paywall. What happens when all of us who aren't rich have no more access to unbiased information about what is going on?

What we are left with is a double-edged sword. Get rid of the paywalls, and the last remnants of a free press die. The paywalls stay (and inevitably get more and more pricey), and only rich people can afford to read the news. At one point, probably in the near future, the only news we will be able to trust will be what we see with our own eyes.

"When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we hold dear are endangered. "

—Christopher Dodd