Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog

The decent media is not modest these days. “Democracy Dies in Darkness” says the excellent Washington Post, intimating, if I understand it right, that the only way for the US to avoid dictatorship is that I pay subscription fees. Maybe I would if they just stopped devoting every single one of their articles to King Ubu. La Repubblica tells us that it will “always fight for the defense of freeedom of information, for its readers and for all those who have in their hearts the principles of democracy and of civil coexistence.” Beautiful (and behind a paywall).

The epidemic expert Jonathan Quick, interviewed by the Guardian, had this remarkable observation, talking about Covid-19: news tends to be behind paywalls, while fake news is free. The Guardian is in a way the right place to make this comment, since it remains, admirably, free-access with voluntary subscription (and all the same does not seem to be doing too poorly). But everywhere else there has been no change of policy. Whether you are looking at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tages Anzeiger (“Dieser Abo+ Artikel ist exklusiv für Abonnenten”), La Repubblica, La Stampa, the kind of reputable press organs to which we would naturally turn, all have their more in-depth analyses reserved for subscribers. (The Russian Vedomosti seems to be an exception.)

Granted, every company (except maybe the Washington Post, since I have a feeling I am ordering enough from Amazon already) is entitled to earn money. But not all companies claim that their business model is about saving the world. My dear self-praising press, if you are really as generously public-minded as you are, here is a good way to demonstrate it. People around the world are genuinely worried about the Coronavirus epidemic and eager for serious information, if only to counter rumors and conspiracy theories. They eagerly seek credible, validated information that has gone through professional vetting, but many of them cannot afford to subscribe to all the relevant sources.

A few days before and after major elections, outlets such as the NYT and Wapo generally make their political articles free-access. The current health scare is an even more serious occasion.

This is the time for all serious news media around the world to show that their grand declarations of philanthropy are not just words.

We, the readers, should vociferously demand that as a public service these press organs immediately make all Covid-19 news, reports and analyses free-access.

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