I think the press also made the mistake that it too often excused, ignored or even justified bad behavior of special interests. Their own ambitions to protect their business model and their monopoly on information left the role of the 4th estate neglected.<p>I think that information available today is more accurate than a few decades ago. Sure, weighting the quality has become harder because the quantity increased, but people will learn to adjust to that.<p>It is quite sad though. I remember my favorite newspaper writing about itself how it is economically forced to use services of facebook to get enough engagement and how they would still report critically about their business partners. That was around 2013-2014 I believe. The newspaper in question is quite a big player in the media landscape (not US).<p>The idea here can only be described as an indecent proposal at best. Business financing the news media? This is basically back to the roots with all the problems but with far more subversive methods. I think if the need increases, people will find a way to finance investigative journalism again. There are already some creators that are on this path. And they seem to be way more independent.<p>Many really good journalists might get lost on the way though.