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I agree with your analysis. The current (and biggest IMHO) problem with journalism in the US is that it's coupled with advertising and so inevitably has an ele

I agree with your analysis. The current (and biggest IMHO) problem with journalism in the US is that it's coupled with advertising and so inevitably has an element of corporate propaganda. The main way to combat that is to have the industry as a whole receive funding from a central source so that advertisers can't dictate what is acceptable to each reporting agency. This is why networks like PBS (which is largely publicly funded) and FSTV/LinkTV (which are funded by donations) have more investigative journalism and documentaries than networks like CNN or Fox News. I'd also like to see something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine brought back for all media. So to receive funding from the central pool, some percentage of articles would have to be in the public good. That's a subjective thing to try to quantify, but, it could start with metrics like what percentage of articles have been verified as accurate or retracted - resulting in some kind of journalistic standard rating. I'm not a journalist, but I've been thinking about the problem of micropayments for things like open source software for a long time as well. There may be a solution that would work well for both specialties, as they seem to be getting left behind by purely free market forces.

jawns 9y ago
If you're worried about propaganda and bias, getting the majority of funding from a central source sounds like a really bad way to go. Look at all the state-funded media in other countries. Guess how critical of the government they are? While it's true that advertisers may exert some pressure on publishers (and corporate consolidation has made this worse), it's far better to have hundreds of advertisers, any single one of whom you can freely tick off, than to have a single large benefactor whom you can't. Even if the benefactor is largely benevolent and hands-off, it's not something you should bank on.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  You're right. Newshour is notorious for heavily biased poorly researched 'news'. What little i've seen of the BBC is pretty shameful as well. We're fortunate in the western world to have a free press that delivers such deep, thoughtful, even handed and well researched news. Can you imagine how horrible the situation in puerto rico would be today without that coverage? I'd say the U.S.'s deft handling of Iraq and Afghanistan are direct consequences of the quality of our news.
smsm42 9y ago
State financing and governmental curation of content is the worst thing you can think of if you want freedom of the press. It doesn't matter if it's called "fairness", or "public good", or "truth", or anything else - by the end of it, it would be just a means by which people currently in power can shape the content of the news. It is never a good idea to give governmental enforcers control over the content of the press, and it never ends well. > There may be a solution that would work well for both specialties, as they seem to be getting left behind by purely free market forces. Open source is doing spectacularly well on free market, what are you talking about? Linux is kicking ass, most of content served on the web is served by open source, most of the browsers used to read that content are fully or partially open-source, number of active open source projects is in the thousands and number of participants is probably in millions. Journalism is not doing as well, but I wonder if it has to do not only with the payment model but with the quality of their product, which, sadly, has lately drastically declined.
- 96aeb1e335 9y ago
  > State financing and governmental curation of content is the worst thing you can think of if you want freedom of the press. You can have public funding with independent editorial control and content curation. This is how most publicly funded news outlets work in liberal democracies, such as the BBC.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    What's "independent"? If someone doesn't work for government, it doesn't mean he is "independent" - everybody has their opinions and biases and peer networks and so on. If somebody does work for the government, they are certainly not "independent" in any sensible meaning of the word. How would you ensure that "independent editorial control" would not oppress unpopular opinions? Institute yet another independent curator of curators? And then the third one and fourth one? Why not just leave the people alone and instead of having a dozen curatorial organizations just let them themselves choose what they want to read and listen to? You think they are not able of figuring it by themselves? > This is how most publicly funded news outlets work in liberal democracies, such as the BBC. Most of those outlets are very biased and open only to particular set of opinions. Including, of course, BBC. While they manage to occasionally produce high-quality content, they certainly nowhere near providing an adequate representation of the spectrum of opinion existing in the society. Fortunately, in most liberal democracies state-run media does not enjoy the monopoly on information, thus this bias is easily corrected by a gamut of other media outlets. However, since private media is capable of representing the whole gamut of opinions anyway, and to produce high-quality content too, and there is no discernable advantage in public media in that regard, what's the point of having it at all?

jawns 9y ago

If you're worried about propaganda and bias, getting the majority of funding from a central source sounds like a really bad way to go. Look at all the state-funded media in other countries. Guess how critical of the government they are? While it's true that advertisers may exert some pressure on publishers (and corporate consolidation has made this worse), it's far better to have hundreds of advertisers, any single one of whom you can freely tick off, than to have a single large benefactor whom you can't. Even if the benefactor is largely benevolent and hands-off, it's not something you should bank on.

jfoutz 9y ago
You're right. Newshour is notorious for heavily biased poorly researched 'news'. What little i've seen of the BBC is pretty shameful as well. We're fortunate in the western world to have a free press that delivers such deep, thoughtful, even handed and well researched news. Can you imagine how horrible the situation in puerto rico would be today without that coverage? I'd say the U.S.'s deft handling of Iraq and Afghanistan are direct consequences of the quality of our news.

smsm42 9y ago

State financing and governmental curation of content is the worst thing you can think of if you want freedom of the press. It doesn't matter if it's called "fairness", or "public good", or "truth", or anything else - by the end of it, it would be just a means by which people currently in power can shape the content of the news. It is never a good idea to give governmental enforcers control over the content of the press, and it never ends well. > There may be a solution that would work well for both specialties, as they seem to be getting left behind by purely free market forces. Open source is doing spectacularly well on free market, what are you talking about? Linux is kicking ass, most of content served on the web is served by open source, most of the browsers used to read that content are fully or partially open-source, number of active open source projects is in the thousands and number of participants is probably in millions. Journalism is not doing as well, but I wonder if it has to do not only with the payment model but with the quality of their product, which, sadly, has lately drastically declined.

96aeb1e335 9y ago
> State financing and governmental curation of content is the worst thing you can think of if you want freedom of the press. You can have public funding with independent editorial control and content curation. This is how most publicly funded news outlets work in liberal democracies, such as the BBC.
- smsm42 9y ago
  What's "independent"? If someone doesn't work for government, it doesn't mean he is "independent" - everybody has their opinions and biases and peer networks and so on. If somebody does work for the government, they are certainly not "independent" in any sensible meaning of the word. How would you ensure that "independent editorial control" would not oppress unpopular opinions? Institute yet another independent curator of curators? And then the third one and fourth one? Why not just leave the people alone and instead of having a dozen curatorial organizations just let them themselves choose what they want to read and listen to? You think they are not able of figuring it by themselves? > This is how most publicly funded news outlets work in liberal democracies, such as the BBC. Most of those outlets are very biased and open only to particular set of opinions. Including, of course, BBC. While they manage to occasionally produce high-quality content, they certainly nowhere near providing an adequate representation of the spectrum of opinion existing in the society. Fortunately, in most liberal democracies state-run media does not enjoy the monopoly on information, thus this bias is easily corrected by a gamut of other media outlets. However, since private media is capable of representing the whole gamut of opinions anyway, and to produce high-quality content too, and there is no discernable advantage in public media in that regard, what's the point of having it at all?