People who have a different worldview are probably just going to bury this, but in case it is useful information to anyone, I will write it anyway.
To make it easier for people to accept the premise, let's suppose that we are not concerned about the United States. Say we are worried about some other countries.
The issue is that when only a relatively small number of the largest media companies show up in the results, that makes it easier for state or corporate interests to control the information stream that citizens receive. If smaller, independent outlets were surfaced more often, it would mean that in order to push any particular narrative effectively, there would be that many more media outlets to control. It could make it much more difficult for a government or special interest to propagandize, since they would need to influence a very large number of independent outlets.
And again I realize that many people here may not believe that government propaganda still exists in American media. But I think that most can agree that it does happen in many other countries at least.
This assumes that an endless array of small media sources is more difficult to control than large ones. I'd say that's false. An endless array of small media sources can just as easily be all traced back to a single controller. That's actually the business model of Sinclair media, for example.
But because smaller media sources are forgettable and have fewer eyeballs checking them, there's no record when they do something unethical like the large companies.
Rathergate would not happen with some small, forgettable news source. The falsehood would be pushed and unquestioned because nobody wants to play whack-a-mole.
To make it easier for people to accept the premise, let's suppose that we are not concerned about the United States. Say we are worried about some other countries.
The issue is that when only a relatively small number of the largest media companies show up in the results, that makes it easier for state or corporate interests to control the information stream that citizens receive. If smaller, independent outlets were surfaced more often, it would mean that in order to push any particular narrative effectively, there would be that many more media outlets to control. It could make it much more difficult for a government or special interest to propagandize, since they would need to influence a very large number of independent outlets.
And again I realize that many people here may not believe that government propaganda still exists in American media. But I think that most can agree that it does happen in many other countries at least.