Why Newspapers Are Going Bankrupt in the US

They are so incompetent they can't separate news from opinion.

They insist on putting editorial content on the front page and pretending it is news.

Dean Baker has caught them in this fake news format again...

Another Front Page Editorial on Deficits at the Washington Post

Sometimes the Post just leaves readers speechless. It has a front page article with the headline: "GOP finds grist for campaigns in projections of record deficits [this headline only appears in the print edition]."
The article goes on to explain how Republicans are yelling about the new record deficits.

There are two striking features to this article. First, Republicans have criticized President Obama for everything under the sun, including a speech encouraging children to work hard in school. That the Republicans are critical of the latest budget projections is not news and certainly not front page news. Although it might merit a front page story if they did not criticize the projections.

The other striking feature of this story is that the front page only presented the Republican criticisms. Only those who read to the jump page saw that Democrats response that the deficits were the result of the economic collapse in 2008. Even this point is largely left as a matter of "he said, she said," rather than being reported as the fact that it is.

How many people would use a bank if they had to put up with the teller trying to sell them a vacuum cleaner? How many people would go to a restaurant if the waiter was demanding that they had over their clothes so he could do their laundry? So why do newspapers think they can sell "news" when in fact they have turned their papers into propaganda mouthpieces for the ultra-rich and right wing ideologues?