| It's not the government who should control news, but just as a journalist may not be put behind bars for reporting uncomfortable facts, news shall not present anything they're not sure of. I'd like to think the solution is simple, require a license before you can call yourself a news agency and take it away after three unfounded statements. There's room for fun news that reports on some famous guy's divorce, but it should be clearly labeled as speculative rumors. So, if you don't have a news license, you can still print papers and magazine and have tv shows, but like on cigarette packages, there will always be a label visible at all times: Speculative Infotainment. Any controlling body must consist of a healthy mix of representatives and no financial persuasion may be allowed. In essence it's like reading a book and knowing it's fiction, not a report, and most news reporting is the same as information passed around citizens as hearsay. Moreover, when I look at the way some tv hosts report information, it's more acting than should be allowed for something called news. There are probably only 1000 or 2000 active journalists today. Most just repeat, reprint, what they got fed by someone else. In some countried here are investigative journalists who have their own TV shows on (partly) publicly funded TV. What's most important is that before blindly believing a report, one is well served to compare with other agencies who are funded by an opposing interest group. What one might misrepresent can be spelled out clearly in some other place. Relying on a single source for news is like trusting the computer clock in a distributed system. |
Is also something that has not worked very well, historically speaking. Who is going to give out those licenses? Government. Who does the news agency report on? Government.