Three Categories
Journalism platforms in Middle Remikra fall generally into three categories: factual, discord, and expressionist. Factual platforms are taxpayer-funded and have a top-down payroll. These platforms report purely facts and, although are allowed to quote opinions made by individuals, must give credit to those said individuals. Discord platforms are privately-owned platforms whose writers are paid directly by subscribers, where writers take a portion of the subscription payments while the employer takes a portion. Moderators in discord platforms ask questions each of which sparks a debate while writers on both sides of the debate conduct field research and write subsequent articles supporting their arguments. Expressionist platforms are also privately-owned where writers are paid by subscribers in a similar fashion to discord platforms. The difference with expressionist platforms, though, is that there is no debate structure involved; writers are free to write their own topics and discussions while conducting field research on their own terms.
Notoriously, expressionist platforms can turn politically biased, because, with no regulation, writers can form super-factions with each other, based upon common interests or, more importantly, political views. These super-factions have the ability to sway the entire said organization into excluding writers who disagree, and can cause the organization to turn, effectively, into a propaganda station, if left unchecked.
History: Combrian Society
There has always been in existence the principle of freedom of expression in Combrian Society, with such a principle inherited from the Edoran Bill of Rights. And early on, small writing platforms existed. However, dominating the press landscape, in the late 1000s and early 1100s, was a factual writing platform known as The Cardinal. Founded in 1086, The Cardinal set out to report solely on factual information; and, to this day, exists as the official platform for the Province of Combria.
However, The Cardinal did have a period of time where its membership was corrupt. During his tenure, Combrian President Arthur Chadwick appointed Paul Mervins to The Cardinal to start a politically-charged expressionist platform, a task appropriate for Mervins and his ultra-nationalist views as well as his unwavering loyalty to Chadwick. Mervins' column cast strong influence over the other columns in The Cardinal, as the writer platform began turning effectively into a platform reinforcing Chadwick's political agenda. Consequently, The Cardinal played a dangerous role in the Combrian-Wannonian War of the 1150s and 1160s as well as charged certain factions during the civil conflicts that raged throughout the Combrian territories after the end of the War and the departure of Chadwick from the Presidency.
Jacob Henry became President of Combria in 1184, and, in 1185, abolished Mervins' politically-charged expressionist column, relieving Mervins in the process. Henry then enacted laws to restore The Cardinal as an objective news-reporting agency. Mervins, angered by this decision, staged an "office coup" in The Cardinal Headquarters, where he enforced said "coup" with a squadron of spellcasters. President Henry sent in the Combrian National Guard, who confronted the spellcasters in a gunfire-versus-spellfire shootout, during which Paul Mervins, himself, was shot and killed. Mervins' death sparked riots throughout the city of Jestopole.
To settle the unrest, President Henry sold The Cardinal as a private agency to the Paul Mervins Estate, and established a new factual platform known as the Fact-Reporter, headquartered in Hasphitat. Henry also chartered for capital grants to be available for entrepreneurs throughout the nation wishing to establish their own writer platforms, newsletters, and journals.
The Cardinal, ironically, would become ever more biased and charismatic over the years that followed, favoring the land encompassing the present-day Province of Combria and the House of Masons over President Henry and his government seat in Hasphitat. This would play a major role in the formation of North Combria during the Retunian Revolution.
After the Retunian Revolution and the establishment of the Federal Estates of Retun, also known today as the Early Republic, the Paul Mervins Estate sold The Cardinal back to the government of the Province of Combria, as The Cardinal returned to its role as a factual news-reporting agency. Meanwhile, the Federal Estates government enacted a stipulation to refrain from establishing its own factual writer platform, in order to further the principle of freedom of expression. However, the Retunian Republic's constituent provinces, counties, and local governments would fund their own factual platforms. The time period encompassing the 1240s and 1250s saw an explosion in the number of expressionist platforms established, as there emerged the third type of writer platform: the discord writer platform, of which the Three Points, established in 1259, was the first.
Of big debate in the year 1259 was the upcoming 1260 election between the incumbent Prime Minister, James Black of the Foundationist Party, and challenger Robert Smith of the National Labor Party. Several wealthy families during that time pooled funds together to establish the Three Points, initially a non-profit news journal, with the intent to employ both writers who supported the conservative-leaning Foundationist Party and writers who supported the liberal-leaning National Labor Party. It was the Three Points who set precedents on the rules governing a healthy debate between the writers, mandating a moderator to ask certain debate questions, and dictating how writers on each side of a given debate voiced arguments in civil fashion and on limited column space.
Ultimately, Edward Jackson, who was neither a Foundationist or Laborist, would win the 1260 election. In the wake of this, the Three Points would pursue debate topics largely separate from national politics, with exception being their take on the Ruins of Edom discovered in the late 1260s. To note, it was that debate which helped to spark the Cabotton University riot of 1272. Regardless, numerous discord platforms would emerge over the coming years and decades, not just in the Retunian Republic, but also in Locin, the Great North, and numerous countries in Canticula.
In 1289, John Bowers purchased the Three Points, and turned it into a for-profit agency. He also discontinued the discord model and turned the Three Points into a purely expressionist platform, while vowing to allow writers from "all political sides" to join the agency and write freely for their own columns, regardless of whether or not the topics were political. Over the next few years, the Three Points would lean toward Progressivist and Reformed Foundationist viewpoints. By the late 1290s, the Three Points was very pro-Progressivist and in strong support of Prime Minister John Waltmann; however, the Three Points was also starkly anti-Holz-Finzi and refused to recognize the Darkfire Community as a legitimate demographic. By 1308, though no writer from the Three Points came out and outright supported the far-right figure, Walter Scott Mason, the Three Points became increasingly anti-Finzi and increasingly conservative.
Along with the 1309 Revolution, the re-establishment of the Retunian Republic as the Independent Commonwealth State of Retun (ICSR), and the beginning of Holz Finzi's tenure as Prime Minister, came sweeping legislation officially recognizing reader bases of paying subscribers for writing platforms as "reader communities" and giving said "reader communities" the power to petition and vote for a writer to write and publish an article of cross-examination with a writer platform in the event that the said writer platform produced an article that was unfavorable. Prior to this, and especially during the year 1308, subscribers for a writer platform unhappy with the articles produced by that platform would simply unsubscribe from the said platform. Usually, this would happen with newsletters that produced conservatively-biased articles. In this case, liberal-leaning subscribers would terminate their subscriptions, leading the overall reading base of the newsletter to grow increasingly conservative, as the conservative readers, content with the articles, would stay. This would lead to increased incentive for newsletters to write more politically-biased articles. In 1308, this was a widespread issue, and, coupled with widespread economic hardships, lead to a very polarized national population. Finzi, in response to this, after the 1309 Revolution, enacted the "reader community" stipulations with the intent to give those factions within a said reader base the ability to legitimately voice their opinions and have "power of petition" over the writer platform establishments so that they would not have to resort to abandoning the said writer platforms; thus, the writer platform and its reader base would never become politically slanted.
These reforms had partial success, as they do today. Biased platforms and reader bases continue to exist but are not nearly as radical or dangerous as the ones in the years leading up to the 1309 Revolution.
More On The Three Points
Historians argue that the Three Points officially became a politically conservative writer platform in 1309, and remained so for the rest of its days. During the 1311-12 War, the platform was critical of Holz Finzi and furthermore "saw the better side" of the ultra-nationalist Reformed Federal Estates Commander Jefferson Davis, who spear-headed the failed war agenda against the ICSR. The Three Points expressed overall views of the Knights of the Common Good as a morally corrupt organization, but gave attention to select figures from that organization who were seen to have "had some good intentions." The Three Points favored the next Prime Minister, Alex Schraber, and the Realist Party over the RAD Party throughout the 1330s and 1340s. And they were critical of Raol Robinson and the RAD Party during Robinson's tenure.
In 1359, the Three Points and its reader base voted to sell the Three Points and all of its assets to the Esurchians, who, in turn, replaced all Retunian writers with Esurchian writers and tasked them to produce pro-Esurchian propaganda. In 1361, an anti-Esurchian super-faction emerged within the Three Points reader base. The said super-faction organized a resistance which stormed the premise of the Three Points headquarters. Although the Esurchian Scouts, surprisingly, did not respond with violence to this incident, the incident nonetheless was met with ignorance and indifference from the Esurchian owners. And in 1362, just like with Cabotton University, the Esurchians liquidated the Three Points, selling all of its titles and assets to various financial institutions, thus ending the existence of the Three Points as a writer platform.
Present-Day
All three types of writer platforms continue to exist in Middle Remikra to this day, as Finzi's laws giving the power of petition to all paying subscribers remain in effect. There is not so much extremism in Middle Remikra as there may have been in the past. However, there has been an issue with the spread of misinformation, as is the case throughout most of the Circlarian Realm. However, in the Retunian Commonwealth, peer reviews and community awareness help to keep the issue of misinformation in check.