“The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.”
- - A.J. Liebling
If Liebling has it right, the "Press" is a failure in both its function and its role. I think Liebling has it right.
I disagree with Leibling: He's got it back asswards. The role of the press in society is to inform, PERIOD; it has no other function.
Money has nothing to do with an honest press. Other than the fact that money is necessary to pay the day-to-day bills of an on-going news organization, it shouldn't matter at all.
Money is first of all a standard of quantification useful to any "system of account." What a lot of people seem to forget is that any system of account always entails the evaluation of some aspect of human activity which is not directly reducible to "quantification."
But I guess that must stand as a digression. We weren't exactly speaking of a "theory of money" here.
But all the same, God help us — were "money" to become the "gold standard" of human living....