I think it would be great to publicly fund journalism. And make public funding contingent on whether news sources accurately represent the full substance of their source material, practiced evidence-based fact-checking, and had rules to prevent the selective application of either of those first two conditions, and by omission bias their audience.
Comment on So much for that dream.
Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world 10 months agoI know “state-funded media” is an ominous word to Americans, but most European countries have their own government broadcaster and news organization, entirely funded through taxes.
Those generally offer high-quality non-biased journalism (of course it’s always based on how authoritarian the government is). The British BBC, the Swedish SVT, the German DW etc. are all publicly owned broadcasting companies.
flossdaily@lemmy.world 10 months ago
nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
You’ve just given whatever regulatory body significant power and influence. It will have its own biases if it doesn’t simply become outright politicized, and now they dictate facts or else. Inaccuracy or “fake news” are used by authoritarian regimes all the time to justify silencing of critics.
flossdaily@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not necessarily. You can put safeguards in place. For example our appeals courts don’t ever decide fact. They make rulings about the law.
You can also have bipartisan panels that oversee this, with extremely limited power unless they rule unanimously.
You also have congressional oversight adding another check.
If the original inception and scope of all these things is cleverly drafted, we could see a lot of new media pop up that is vastly superior to the crap we have now.
Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The other nice thing for “state funded media” is they often have translations for international audiences
For example CBC / Radio-Canada also have an international page, Radio-Canada International offered in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic etc.
nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
The BBC World Service is the largest and broadcasts in something like 40 languages around the world. I think the normal BBC news still uses some of the sound effects traditionally associated with their shortwave broadcasts.
STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Journalism student here. Tbh in my experience I have come to the conclusion that news stations should never be state owned. I think state funding for news is good but I think the best solution is a non profit ngo group running the news. When the government owns the news they can change the news and manipulate what facts get shown as is the case with the BBC.
NathanielThomas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
When private entities own the news you get much worse.
Trekman10@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It scales. Privately owned community newspapers might have a bias, but if there’s one in every town with 1,000 people, then exponentially that increases the amount of different agendas of each of those private entities, and they can sort of cover each other’s weaknesses. It’s the concentration and consolidation that’s the issue.
Of course, private industry inherently wants to merge and consolidate, as is the nature of capitalist competition. So either you continually break up mergers or develop a public community newspapers that are independent of any government - its debatable how independent the BBC or CBC are.
icydefiance@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Your second paragraph is severely understated. It completely invalidates your first paragraph.
In the USA there are 4 corporations that own pretty much all TV news, whether it’s local or not. Add another 2 corporations to cover almost everything else on TV.
Online news is a little more diverse, but it’s heading in the same direction.
And the government won’t break up those corporations because they’re too big for that to be possible. It’s too late. Whether the corporations use regulatory capture or just a massive team of lawyers to make antitrust lawsuits prohibitively expensive, they simply can’t be broken up.
NathanielThomas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Or the CBC across the border. Also, PBS in their own country. Or TV Ontario. All public and successful broadcasters.
bakachu@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I honestly don’t think this is a bad idea for the US…for now at least. Right now your typical options for official statements from government leaders are either through (1) politically polarized media like CNN or Fox, (2) paid subscription to better journalism, or (3) social media monopolies like Twitter (X) and Instagram. Can we really not fund something entirely independent of a mega-corporation to get official info out?
nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Voice of America through the United States Agency for Global Media.
People think they’re boring.
nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
The US government broadcaster is the Voice of . For a long time it was unavailable to Americans (propaganda laws), but is now.
We also have NPR and public broadcasting, both have news.
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 10 months ago
BBC is publicly funded but they collect the money themselves trough the TV license, they are not funded by the government trough taxes and they make a shit ton of money from commercial operations, like selling shows and formats to foreign networks. That’s probably the best way to keep an independent state network with minimal government meddling. Though we’ve seen that individuals with power at the network can bias the news reporting. Like BBC definitely favors the political right.