This came through my X (Twitter) feed this morning and I was quite shocked at how much these "news" apps charge. News24 is one of the bigger sites in South Africa yet it is full of out dated news stores. Trusted News First is their slogan and this is not exactly how I would call this. Who pays for news today? You would like to think advertising is where they generate the revenue because subscriptions will not.
The problem is 90% of the news articles being featured are 2 - 3 days old and have been take and reworded from other online reports. The bulk of their site is not work their journalists have done and is why it is always 2 days behind the news story that aired somewhere else originally. I know this as I have read most of their news articles somewhere else previously from various other sites.
20 years ago we had news papers and depending on who you were you read a certain type of newspaper that aligned with your political thinking. Television news was meant to report the news except they have gone down reporting a certain narrative which is not necessarily reporting the truth.
If you do not believe their narrative or you question the details then you are labelled as being far left or far right or a conspiracy theorist. Isn't it amazing how many of the covid conspiracies were spot on and the media were the diving force bend the false narratives.
Another revelation recently was how much USAID money was being funneled through news companies so that they would continue feeding a certain narrative that was in favor of one political party. If you read and hear certain narratives played enough times it is form of brain washing and sadly many people believe the media.
The problem with the news today is no one knows what is true anymore and just because someone is reporting a story it could be hiding something else. I do not watch the news or read news papers yet I feel I am up to date with what is happening in the world by having an open mind. If the real news was being published it would no be a happy read and it is very depressing what has been going on for decades.
Back in 1993 I visited the Sky News satellite office in Durban, South Africa on work related business. The small news team was packing up with them saying their work was done and now they need to move to a new assignment. This made no sense at the time as the news does not stop, but reporting a certain narrative does as it is targeting and manipulating a certain result.
I think what was shocking was the media coverage of the Hamas attacks on October the 7th and they were never once called terrorists. This should have been a red flag immediately and this type of coverage is slowly affecting their ratings as people are moving away from the normal media outlets.