If you've ever wondered why this is true, it's because right-wing media has billionaire sponsors and left-wing media does not

It is truly that simple

April 08, 2026 - 15:05 UTC

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I only need Jon Oliver and Have I got news for you.
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I think it probably doesn't hurt that doing actual investigative journalism & research costs a lot more money than just making up nonsense to manufacture outrage.
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In the longterm people must support full guaranteed public funding for every creator, every outlet and every social media platform, as a free press is a human right, not a commodity to be bought or sold. Access to all important people must also be guaranteed.

Until then we don't have free press.
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Oligarchs will spend millions (if not billions) to avoid paying their fair share.
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Billionaires would rather burn their money than give it to people in need.
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Also, right wing is really concerned with quantity over quality, just flooding the zone with whatever nonsense from anyone, whereas more on the left are actual journalists and writers trying to say something. An ecosystem of free left wing media would be just as low quality and full of BS
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Do people who get mad about paywalls think of writers as solar-powered content machines who don't need food or rent money, or are they just so wealthy they've never considered the price of being alive? Truly, I'm curious
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I got a face full of this the other day bsky.app/profile/padrock.bsky.social/post/3miuifccphc25
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One thing writers can do that would help enormously is use gift links whenever possible. The best of them already do. Same for subscribers.

I wish the publications themselves would do it, too.

Writers deserve to be paid, but it's infeasible to subscribe to every paywalled pub w/social media links
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Neither of those things. I don't have unlimited money, I can't spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscriptions.

Why would I want to pay for something when I don't know if it's for me?

A story from far outside my area might be worth reading. I'm not buying a subscription to read one article.
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The thing i hate about pay walls is that you cant just grab a copy when someone else is done with it like you could back in the olden times of yore.
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Pretty much. It's amazing how creepy they are.

"Fuck you, pay me" is still a good motto.
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They don't think of writers at all.
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I don't like paywalls either. No one does. It's going to be a lot harder to create Content if we starve to death tho
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Modern conservatism is best understood as a for-profit industry. Everything about it derives from that.

It may not always generate direct profits, but the indirect gains are pretty much the highest ROI anyone with loads of money can get.

And it has no stop function. It will destroy us all.
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They've spent a decade validating and propping up Trump's "Greatest economy ever!" garbage, while shitting all over Biden's legitimately best economy in decades.

Our media is on the side of fascism.
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Also, there do not appear to be any left wing billionaires (even in Silicon Valley) - or they keep their views well hidden
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There's more to it than just that. It's also that right wing programs carry profitable advertising (for scam products) and the left wing shows aren't as profitable to advertisers because the audience won't buy gorilla blood supplements or w/e. Alex Jones is *profitable*. Air America wasn't.
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Note that this means a left wing campaign to ban scam products and fake supplements could be *extraordinarily* effective. It would cut the financial support out from under right wing media.
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One billionaire was paying Rid Dreher's salary until his writing got so strange that he was cut off
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It's basic math.
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Maybe normies on the left or normies in general just don’t care about randos like Piker (Idk a single person who knows who he is) that have no expertise in anything, have accomplished nothing, and exist solely to react and get clicks. Are people sure there is really a leftish market to begin with?
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Just look at Air America Radio, it didn't do particularly well.
I think RW media thrive because they're all about sensationalism and shock value. They don't give a SHIT whether they report the truth or not, so they can make their programming more "exciting".
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Maybe this is super biased and wishful thinking but I have always thought a big part of this is due to the availability of easy advertising dollars for right wing programs. Advertisers know the conservative audience is an easier mark for grifts and scams so the money flows more to the right.
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In the 90s it was funded by "buy gold", commemorative coin, medicare advantage, scam insurance, supplements, erection pills etc

Today they have crypto, my pillow, online gambling, and a host of other advertisers that sell bullshit and need a steady supply of rubes to part from their money.
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Our free articles are on Substack where you can also read Nazi stuff without changing platforms
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Seems the simplest truth is: You don’t pay for propaganda. That’s just not how propaganda works. It is free to consume because the benefit to the persons who paid for it comes only after a large group consume it.
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propagandists don’t usually charge, it’s true
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Hey now, right-wing media also has cash flowing in from Russia to its millennial aged "influencers" that are still on the air? Bennie Johnson, Tim Pool, etc.
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The world is an antimeritocracy.

The less skilled, less talented and more self-centered you are, the richer you will be.

The more skilled, more talented, more selfless and dedicated you are, the more likely that you will be writing from a house made of cardboard.
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Mackenzie Bezos has a chance to do the funniest thing
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This is a brilliant observation. The billionaires have worked out that three things have phenomenal ROI: judges, politicians, and news organizations.
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Indeed. I have little use for Piker, but I have posted like 50 times that "Dems need to fund media ops."
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Not the whole story. Left-wing media also has to spend time, pay staff to independently check facts, do research, get confirmation and opposing viewpoints. Right wing media just makes shit up or parrots talking points sent to them by MAGA PACS / right-wing foundation (e.g. Heritage).
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It's also why right-wing media messaging is also almost completely uniform and always in lock-step with right-wing politicians' messaging. They're not doing journalism. They're doing propaganda.
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Right-wing political spending—whether it's media, PAC's, or think tanks—offers return on investment to billionaires. Tax breaks, regulatory relief, or regulatory capture; it's worth many times what they pay.

Owning social media and setting its rules is valuable, too.
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One thing I would love to see tried is a writer site like Substack that enabled micropayments. So you could put $20 into an online wallet, and buy individual articles for 50¢ from authors you haven't bought a subscription from. Like buying a newspaper or magazine without buying a whole subscription.
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The right has no qualms throwing a bunch of $50k and $100k no-strings donations to hundreds of rando reactionary influencers - liberal donors only spend that money to hire like, Alicia Keys, to perform at a $1000/plate fundraiser for the most moderate politician you’ve ever seen.
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Praeger U churns out video after video (and this is just the smallest part of what they do) more than any real university would spend on a real topic because it's a waste of grants and funds.
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Also, having to rely on the "market" means you can't just produce polemics, people generally want to sponsor real things that will get advertisers.

Having a sugar daddy means you don't have to worry about any of that.
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Or as someone once said, lies are free and the truth is behind a paywall.
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Ah, makes sense. I pay for certain substacks because I know the authors are reliable experts in their fields.
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Hundreds of millions of dollars allows you to call yourself an opinion network and avoid the false statement of fact litigation most of the time, unless of course, you're FOX talking about voting machines.
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there are no billionaire socialists
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Wait I thought China’s billionaire communists were sending their kids here as a long term strategy
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Exactly. This is a problem that definitially will not go away
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A problem is that people see billionaire-backed MS NOW (MSNBC) as "left-wing" when it's an explicitly right-wing billionaire network that fired its most left-leaning anchors, who still weren't even that "left" - they've now hired John Kirby and Matt Miller from the Biden DoD (lol, Israel)
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Every step to the left is a step away from "big money." This is true for everyone. Politicians, pod-casters, companies, youtubers, tweeters and skeeters.
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