modern websites are a pain to navigate with popups, paywall, ads, heavy tracking that slows down navigation, autoplaying video ads etc
modern journalism = let’s just report whatever the person or company says without fact checking, contextualizing or taking a stance. I believe this is done because it takes less effort and because it makes sure that the news org doesn’t anger any of the persons/organizations it has tides with (for ads or direct funding)
The comments solve both problems, as lemmy is ad- and tracking-free and the people in the comments are mostly real people usually without any vested interests in the things they’re discussing.
So OBVIOUSLY I only read the comments. I’ll get the content of the article indirectly as it’s being discussed.