Media Matters: The dark sides of news reporting [Bonus Article]

There’s only so much we can say about the current state of AC Milan, so let’s not run the risk of being repetitive. The first few weeks haven’t been easy on any of us and the international break is indeed a much-needed break, so today we want to talk about something else instead. To be more specific, the state of online news reporting has been gnawing at me for quite some time.

Most of you will know that SempreMilan was founded back in January 2016, starting out as any other fan-driven website. Many things have changed since and while most of these have been of a positive nature, such as Oli and I being able to work with our passion, there is unfortunately a lot to hate about online news reporting. I guess if I had to make it brief, I would say that money talks.

Gone are the days when journalism was all about high-quality content, informative as well as accurate, and this is a big reason why we started the Substack in the first place. Of course, these core values are present for the main website as well but inevitably, we have also been forced to go with the times. Posting just five articles per day, for example, is not at all feasible no matter how good those articles are.

Clickbait has taken over

We have mentioned countless examples of this in past bonus articles, such as Gazzetta dello Sport’s front page reports on AC Milan never changing hands from Elliott Management to Gerry Cardinale. Completely untrue, we must underline, and that type of reporting is unfortunately something we see a lot of these days. In short terms, it doesn’t necessarily have to be true as long as it brings out a reaction.

Having said this, clickbait is far from new and has been with us ever since online media took off. And as the market has become increasingly saturated, there is no doubt that the clickbait is getting more and more intense. You can literally go on any news website these days and you will find at least one example of this. I’d like to say not on SempreMilan, but it probably does occur (I have probably been guilty of it too!).