Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: when a media outlet's survival depends on ad revenue and investor returns, can it really tell you the unfiltered truth?

Think about it. Every headline needs to balance between what happened and what keeps the lights on. Sponsors don't exactly love investigative pieces that challenge their interests. Shareholders want growth metrics, not uncomfortable revelations that tank quarterly earnings.

This tension isn't new, but it hits different in crypto and Web3 spaces. Traditional finance media missed the entire DeFi summer because their banking advertisers weren't ready for that conversation. How many projects got coverage simply because they bought premium ad slots?

Maybe that's why decentralized media protocols keep popping up. When there's no corporate board dictating coverage priorities, when writers own their content on-chain, when readers fund stories through DAOs instead of advertisers pulling strings behind the scenes – the incentive structure flips completely.

Not saying all for-profit outlets are compromised. But the structural conflict? It's baked right into the business model. Always has been.