Journalism should be accessible to everyone. Not many people can afford 30 different subscriptions for every individual news outlet because they’re all pay to read. Remember newspapers? Anyone could buy one on the cheap, now these fuckers have moved to a subscription service that’s even more expensive than the average newspaper used to be.
Ads, which everyone on here would endorse blocking, so that’s out.
All journalism becomes volunteer work, running off of optional donations, which seems unlikely :D
Or all journalism becomes publicly funded via-taxes. This is probably the optimal option but I think most people would agree that ALL journalism being government funded has a ton of risks.
There are tons of countries that already have national and local publicly-funded news networks. Is your solution to move every currently private network to a public-funded model?
Cause to me that sounds like it sounds very expensive, and more importantly, very dangerous to give governments such extreme levels of control over information.
I think you’re missing a potential 4th one, though I’m not 100% convinced as to its feasibility, but a Universal Basic Income and greater societal wealth redistribution raises the bottom so much that everyone can easily afford 30 news subscriptions.
Though personally I think more arms length public funding is the better option since the incentives of capitalism often don’t align with the incentives of high quality journalism.
Here in Finland we have YLE, and it has news, movies/shows, documentaries, radio/podcasts etc. It is funded with tax money, and I consider the two biggest pros to be that news and more are easily accessible for free to anyone and that since YLE isn’t trying to profit from journalism, there are no clickbait headlines. Though, the worst flaw is that goverment-funded journalism is prone to propaganda, and once you control the media, you control the whole country, so people need to be very careful.
it cannot be sensationalized. It cannot even veer mildly from the found facts.
it cannot be filled with agenda bias
it cannot hold any false, non peer reviewed information
they have to pay their sources. And They have to pay their sources well. Especially the ones who are expected to uphold to peer reviews (science journalists, I’m looking at you)
Newspapers used to be full of ads and were also subscription based. You could buy a one off from a paper for relatively cheap, but their primary income was ads and subscribers.
This seems like a common theme. There are just so many things to subscribe to: Netflix, Spotify, New York Times, Amazon, Audible, individual app store applications, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, NPR+, Disney+, etc. Just keeping track of it all is complicated. And all content producers want to maintain the subscription framework, too, passing the costs on to us. This is a little off topic, but it still bugs me that Netflix became a content producer. I think it would have been a cleaner/cheaper arrangement if they’d remained a subscription service only.
Journalism should be accessible to everyone. Not many people can afford 30 different subscriptions for every individual news outlet because they’re all pay to read. Remember newspapers? Anyone could buy one on the cheap, now these fuckers have moved to a subscription service that’s even more expensive than the average newspaper used to be.
Well there are 3 alternatives.
Ads, which everyone on here would endorse blocking, so that’s out.
All journalism becomes volunteer work, running off of optional donations, which seems unlikely :D
Or all journalism becomes publicly funded via-taxes. This is probably the optimal option but I think most people would agree that ALL journalism being government funded has a ton of risks.
Journalism being private run has created the situation we’re in though.
There are tons of countries that already have national and local publicly-funded news networks. Is your solution to move every currently private network to a public-funded model?
Cause to me that sounds like it sounds very expensive, and more importantly, very dangerous to give governments such extreme levels of control over information.
Again, private interests have the tendency to extreme levels of control over information.
They do mega mergers so that three companies end up owning all the news. And can, therefore, control it.
Famously, this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGIYU2Xznb4
I think you’re missing a potential 4th one, though I’m not 100% convinced as to its feasibility, but a Universal Basic Income and greater societal wealth redistribution raises the bottom so much that everyone can easily afford 30 news subscriptions.
Though personally I think more arms length public funding is the better option since the incentives of capitalism often don’t align with the incentives of high quality journalism.
I love the idea of UBI. But I can’t help but worry I’m wrong.
My love for UBI assumes that idle hands will make themselves useful in productive, please or at least non-destructive ways.
I’m not clear I can justify that
Here in Finland we have YLE, and it has news, movies/shows, documentaries, radio/podcasts etc. It is funded with tax money, and I consider the two biggest pros to be that news and more are easily accessible for free to anyone and that since YLE isn’t trying to profit from journalism, there are no clickbait headlines. Though, the worst flaw is that goverment-funded journalism is prone to propaganda, and once you control the media, you control the whole country, so people need to be very careful.
Yea that’s precisely it. Publicly-funded media definitely can be the best option, but there’s always risks it can fall into pure propaganda some day
If I have to pay for it:
If there is a free one with ads:
Wanna regulate? Well. Then. Let’s regulate.
Newspapers used to be full of ads and were also subscription based. You could buy a one off from a paper for relatively cheap, but their primary income was ads and subscribers.
This seems like a common theme. There are just so many things to subscribe to: Netflix, Spotify, New York Times, Amazon, Audible, individual app store applications, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, NPR+, Disney+, etc. Just keeping track of it all is complicated. And all content producers want to maintain the subscription framework, too, passing the costs on to us. This is a little off topic, but it still bugs me that Netflix became a content producer. I think it would have been a cleaner/cheaper arrangement if they’d remained a subscription service only.