Conjecture

A factual layer shared across rival constellations arose when one supplier had to sell the same information to all of them: the wire services, selling to every faction at once, found that each event had a factual core separable from opinion, and that core was what could be sold to anyone. Objectivity was a product of shared distribution cost, and it erodes once distribution is cheap enough to serve each constellation its own. Ansary, ch. 23: six newspapers joined in 1848 "to share the cost of getting news by wire"; the question was what "could be marketed just as successfully to Republicans, know-nothings, constitutional unionists, free-soilers"; "The answer was, facts"; "Once facts became merchandise, newspapers could use their accuracy and objectivity as selling points"; objective news is "an idea the internet later demolished." That a common record across rival stories needs a keeper whose income depends on serving all of them, and that the collective's own record must be in that position or will not be shared, is Leo's step.

How groups think together