Katie Deighton, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (Apple News+):

The maker of ChatGPT said it has acquired TBPN, an online talk show that aims to compete with Bloomberg and CNBC in by-the-minute analysis of technology news and executive interviews. OpenAI declined to disclose the terms of the transaction.

While TBPN’s audience remains modest, averaging around 70,000 viewers per episode across various online platforms, the show has become popular among Silicon Valley power players who consider it more supportive of their industry than traditional news outlets. Chief executives who have appeared as guests include Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

TBPN — an acronym for Technology Business Programming Network — is perhaps one of the biggest jokes in Silicon Valley. It has systemically eroded trust in fact-based journalism. TBPN makes its money by selling obnoxious advertisements for business-to-business software-as-a-service companies in the hope that a few of its 70,000-tech bro audience will buy something. It is fundamentally not in the business of journalism, yet it masquerades as if it’s the next Bloomberg TV or CNBC. It’s neither of these.

Before something is on the Bloomberg Terminal, and subsequently, Bloomberg TV, it is rigorously fact-checked. The reporters who wrote the story are absolved of all conflicts of interest, and if they are found in violation of Bloomberg’s rigorous ethical standards, they are required to recuse themselves. They hold no stock in the companies they report on. The advertising team works on a completely different floor from the newsroom, and the two teams have no contact with each other. Advertisements run in between TV segments in defined time slots.

TBPN has none of this. Its hosts are “tech bros” who worked for Peter Thiel, one of the most infamous tech venture capitalists. They hawk whatever the latest model is from OpenAI or Anthropic and hope their viewers clap like seals whenever they hear about them. They provide technology chief executives with a free advertising space to the most entrenched artificial intelligence enthusiasts in the world. They ask no hardball questions, are terminally online, and praise business executives like they’re the saints of the universe. It’s the most sycophantic, pathetic three-hour circle jerk in the entire technology industry. It’s perfect catnip for executives — all the publicity with none of the journalism.

Hardly anyone is interested in this — judging by TBPN’s abysmal view counts on YouTube — and the ones who are position themselves as the enemies of the “legacy media,” a pejorative they use to describe anyone who engages in fact-based reporting. Or, more specifically, anyone who doesn’t engage in blatant sycophancy for a paycheck. They hope to one day buy out every arm of criticism, dissidence, and disagreement. If you don’t like that, they want you to starve to death, because nobody reads journalism anyway — they prompt the AI chatbots. This is why Elon Musk bought Twitter, why Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, and why David Ellison bought CBS News and now CNN. They hate journalism.

The best thing to do in times like these, when our country and media ecosystem is being violently ripped away from the truth seekers, academics, and professionals who once controlled our institutions, is to embrace independence. Start your own publication. Link to and share the work of the brightest minds doing the dirtiest work in the Valley. Support journalists — whose jobs are at the whims of billionaires — with your own money. Don’t lend credence to the media organizations, like TBPN, that sell their freedom for a dollar.

(And you can bet OpenAI won’t adhere to its promise of keeping TBPN editorially independent. No company spends hundreds of millions of dollars for the public good.)