Interesting use of the word weal, which apparently here is used in the sense of "well-being" rather than the other meaning of "a nasty purple wound": > Governm

Interesting use of the word weal, which apparently here is used in the sense of "well-being" rather than the other meaning of "a nasty purple wound": > Governments exist, amongst other roles, to provide for the common weal, Yes, but governments also exist - looking at governments in general, around the world - to further the interests of officials and their families, and provide them with money, status, disproportionate rights, and ideologically agreeable laws. And then there are organisations, which may be related to governments or effectively similar to governments or agents of governments, with a mission or interest in distorting news so that the money, status, etc., gets delivered. So in theory, under good governance, that wouldn't happen. Additionally, the government would be all-knowing with a good grip on salience, so it wouldn't do anything biased, even by accident. And then we might as well have news distributed by a central ministry of information, which would reliably arbitrate the truth in a good way. Since actual governments are at best kinda corrupt and somewhat stupid, it would be better for taxpayers to fund a diversity of editorially independent news media sources, right? But that's kind of passing the buck to the grass roots. In theory, the natural power of the grass roots can cause information to be critiqued and filtered by by many independent and informed individuals so that a consensus on the facts of what is actually going on bubbles to the top. In reality, it's social media, and its accuracy depends on the power of good moderation and a good culture, which, like good governance, is brought into being and sustained by voodoo. I think the answer is: if you've found a good, trustworthy source of information, whether a public broadcaster, a commercial media entity, or a non-commercial forum, treasure it while it lasts, and by all means bring more of these into being. Except I don't think anybody knows what those means are and it seems to happen more or less by accident. Something about open society.