I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The US government broadcaster is the Voice of America. For a long time it was unavailable to Americans (propaganda laws), but is now. Some Europeans may be familiar with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that is also US-funded by the same agency as the Voice of America.
We also have NPR and public broadcasting (PBS), both have news. They receive government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is supposed to be objective although there have been issues in recent history. They also have corporate donors, which could affect objectivity.
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.
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The US government broadcaster is the Voice of America. For a long time it was unavailable to Americans (propaganda laws), but is now. Some Europeans may be familiar with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that is also US-funded by the same agency as the Voice of America.
We also have NPR and public broadcasting (PBS), both have news. They receive government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is supposed to be objective although there have been issues in recent history. They also have corporate donors, which could affect objectivity.
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.
Removed by mod
Not much different from private…