Google and Facebook

are still threatening to withdraw news from their pages for Downunderites. Now they are also claiming that such a move will allow for even more "disinformation" to spread. This might be right.

I get my information from more than one source. The Senior Cat taught me this by example. 

When I was a mere kitten we lived in remote places. The news my parents relied on came from two sources. One was the news as delivered by crackling radio that tended to fade out as the sun went down. We kittens knew to be silent while the "six o'clock news" was delivered.  The "seven o'clock news" in the morning was important too but not quite as important as that delivered in the early evening. There were undoubtedly commercial stations which also delivered news but we never  listened to those. Apart from the news the only radio we heard was "the Argonauts". My brother and I were Argonauts and listening to the program in the afternoons was important. It informed us about many things.

But the Senior Cat was also getting a newspaper. The entire week's editions would arrive on the same day. He would work his way rapidly through them and then pass them on to the local bank manager who then passed them on to the local policeman. (I suspect the Senior Cat was the fastest reader and the bank manager next.) Nobody else bothered with them. Yes, the news in them was often stale by then. It had often been superseded by other events but it kept the three men in the community who needed to know informed.  

Other people in the community read, if they read anything at all, a paper which came out weekly. It was intended for rural people. It contained farming news and reports of meetings of organisations like the Country Women's Association. The local football results  and number of runs in cricket also featured prominently. 

People were not well informed. They saw no need to be. What happened in the city was of no interest to them. They took their shoe boxes of receipts and bills into the bank to do their tax. They sent their children to school but many of them were happy to have their children leave school too - the moment they were legally able to do just that.

I don't know how different it is now but it would be different. News is much more readily available. People have satellite dishes and access to a wide variety of entertainment. Access to the internet is much more widespread.

But people in rural areas still do not buy newspapers. They rely on other means of getting information. There is television. There is the internet. Newspapers might be behind a paywall but there are other sources of information and most country folk are not going to pay to read a newspaper on line. If Google and Facebook cease allowing news to be disseminated through them then people will either cease to get information or they will get information from even less reliable sources.  

Print media and on-line news services can put everything behind a paywall if they wish to do so. Their advertising revenue will drop of course but perhaps people will "pay" for the news. On the other hand they might just rely on the other stories which spring up and spread out from other unreliable sources.