I realize that posting additional questions may seem an act of ego, but I wonder when an opportunity like this will present itself?

You write many articles critiquing media's inability to cover itself. Then let's talk about something less important than politics demise, but pertinent to the article I'm posting on

For years, I fundamentally doubted the numbers that we were getting about viewership on Netflix. When the source material for a systems numbers IS the company itself, doubts should have been springing up from the beginning. When it became public knowledge that Netflix had been deceiving the public for years on its rubric, I was not shocked.

I also had doubts almost from the beginning about Netflix's methods of delivery. While I understand with the idea of bingewatching as an approach for entertainment, at no time did I consider it a sustainable business model. It got rid of the sense of community that came with the best of watching television and has never been replaced. The fact that Netflix answered this obvious problem by developing a ridiculous amount of programming should have been questionable as well; it definitely raised flags about my friends.

So my question, Mr. Jarvis, is simple: where were you and your ilk when this happened? As journalists your job is to greet certain ideas with skepticism. In all the years I read Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide and almost any journal or site pertaining to television prior to 2020, never once did I see you or any of your fellow critics question the information you were being fed about Netflix (or almost any other streaming services) numbers. What excuse did you possibly have? Were you enjoying House of Cards and Orange is the New Black so much you never questioned Netflix when they said they were so popular? Did you just laugh on Hulu's early commercials of aliens turning our brains to soup that you never questioned why they were working as they did? And if not raising any questions at all, isn't there a certain responsibility for the fact that too many servers have now followed in their footsteps and are creating the crisis we face now?

The near collapse of Netflix and other streaming service may have inevitable, but I can't help but think that the media - and to an extent, all fans of streaming - are unindicted co-conspirators? Just as when Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds shattered home run records that had stood for decades and the media and the fans pretended not to notice that the athletes hitting them were far more massive than they had been a few years before, we didn't ask the hard questions because we enjoyed the results too much. There are lots of people to blame in all this, and to that extent some must be faced on critics like you for never asking how the sausage was made.