[Iv]

> Because barring the entrance of one of these as-yet-unimagined alternatives, it seems we'll need to lean on regulation...but then we get into messiness of regulating free speech.

OK. I'm on break, I'll make it a big longer to translate and sum up what I think has been the most underrated video of the 2016 french presidential election discussing how to «fix» political press. (reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GspZxQGRAXw ). Be warned, the proposal is pretty radical, but compare them to the radicalism of people who first proposed to separate the three branches of power. Here we are trying to make the media into a 4th one, independent as the others are.

The speaker is the director of a famous left-wing newspaper, "Le Monde Diplomatique" (not related to Le Monde). His goal is to substract the media from 2 influences: political influences exerted through public aids and funding, and market influences exerted through shareholders and advertisers.

He first proposes to separate media into two categories: entertainment and information (well information, general interests and political debates). He wants to avoid having a government agency arbitrarily sort between them so instead, he proposes 3 (radical) objective criterion to identify information media:

- non-profit. They are forbidden to give dividends to shareholders.

- non-concentration. One economic agent can not own more than one media in the "information" category (I did not know that until 1984, this was the rule in France)

- no advertisement.

Not fulfilling these criterion would lead to be classified as entertainment. 100% legal but makes one unsuitable for public aid.

Then he proposes to replace public aids by a pooling of means, financed by the state, that would provide services that all these media need: printing, distribution, office space, servers, storage, distribution, accounting services, juridic services, commercial services, subscription databases, correction, etc...

He mentions that, in France at least, most media already outsource their subscription database, to a few big private operators. Also that semi-public pooling of distribution networks is already in place to allow small publications to exist.

How does this make it independent from the state if the state is the payer? Well he propose to organize that as a «régie publique» which could be translated as "autonomous public authority" and reminds that the French healthcare is managed that way and oversees masses of money more important that the State's budget.

The key there is twofold:

- Money does not come from a tax but from a "cotisation" (contribution). It is often seen as the same by payers, but it follows a very different circuit: taxes go feed the state's budget that is then debated to fund the various public efforts. A contribution goes directly into the authority's budget and it does not need the state's approval for spending it one way or the other. It only needs state's approval to be in deficit.

- The authority is managed by representatives elected from its employees and service users as well as some representative from the newspapers' readers.

This is a very radical proposal, but so far that is the only one I saw that takes seriously the claim that the media is a branch of a similar importance than justice and that it needs to be as independent as possible from market and political influences and proposes realistic means to prevent market and politics influence as well as respecting the freedom of speech.

[TeMPOraL]

I love this. Not because I understand it fully - I suspect someone is going to shoot plenty of holes through this proposal - but because it's the first one I saw that actually treats the problem seriously, and seems to preserve the reason we need press while eliminating the bad incentive structures.

[Iv]

For the context, this proposal was made by this journal director to JL Mélenchon, the far-left candidate in the election (who got 19% of votes, i.e. not a marginal) hoping it would be included in his political program.

It is a well-thought proposal by someone who knows the press industry well. It of course has leftist bias but I suspect that while there can be political criticism, it is probably pretty solid.

I don't know how applicable it is in the US though.

[groby_b]

For context on "far-left" - it's nothing like the far left in the US. France has an extremely well-developed set of leftists. It's the only country I ever visited where people had deep discussions about the difference between Trotskyism and Leninism when debating actual political events.

The US far left would maybe, possibly, pass as moderate left in France. Obama would be considered... center right? OK, centrist.

These ideas will not easily translate into a US political context :)

For those curious, his movement, FI, proposes also a rewriting of the constitution, Frexit, withdrawal from TTIP, sustainability as law. It's... interesting. It's a very uniquely French party.

[eeZah7Ux]

Obama is not close to the center according to https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012

Clinton and trump are on https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

I find the site reasonably unbiased.

[rmc]

I think that site is tweaked for US politics, so yes according to US politics, Obama is not centre-right. The questions include things that are political issue in the USA, but are settled (one way or another) in other countries, like "should there be public broadcasting?".

[Iv]

Yes that's true :-)

There are a lot of interesting intellectual discussion on the far-left here. A good amount of crackpots and conspiracy theorists too, but historically France has always been a crucible for leftist ideologies. On the other hand, there is a certain anti-technologism, a brand of eco-conservatism that seem to be less common in the US.

I use "far-left" to describe FI concisely but I am of the opinion that this is a misnomer. For me, far-left means communist and means collectivization of the means of productions. Only Force Ouvrière and the NPA propose that in France (and together they make 3%) Mélenchon is a more classic left-wing, just a bit more radical than Hollande but maybe less than Mitterand.

Yes, Obama would be considered centrist or right-wing moderate but French politics, like US politics, did shift right in the last decade. Many people compare Macron to Obama. People like me, who are pretty on the left, consider both to be center or right-center but many media put Macron on the left here.

It is muddied by the fact that he (like Obama actually) was vague enough on his campaign promises to not know who he will side with on issues that oppose employees and employers.

> These ideas will not easily translate into a US political context :)

It would be interesting to try though. Here the speaker talks to someone who does not mind leftist ideas but it would be doable to say the same things using a more libertarian mindset. After all, people like Alex Jones would probably be empowered by these too. If you have a leftist audience, focus on the independence from shareholders, if you have a right-wing audience, focus on the independence from government. If you have a conspiracy alt-right audience, wink implying that you get independence from the jews/reptilians/globalists that control the big media companies.

Semantic-field translation is a very useful exercise that the left must master :-)

[rmc]

I remember reading about Uber opening in France. Obviously the french taxi drivers weren't happy with it, and Uber were putting out press releases about how they "want to work together and blah blah corporate waffle".

But you can't just ignore the law like that like you can in USA, the French taxi drivers started attacking and burning Uber cars.

https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-t...

[Iv]

To be fair this was a clusterfuck. Taxi here are almost universally hated: they are rude, rare, dishonest, expensive and disorganized. Also, their scarcity in Paris was purposefully organized.

Most people also see that Uber violates important labor laws so most people did not take sided there.

The reason why taxi drivers could get away with so many violence is because the owners of the main taxi companies are VERY well connected to the political world.

[TeMPOraL]

Judging by the media coverage I've seen over the years, burning cars seems to simply be the standard way of protesting in France...

[notahacker]

It's possible this is covered in the talk (as I don't speak French), but how exactly is "information" defined other than being non-commercial?

I mean, on the one hand it's certain that there are people who will happily spend their days writing conspiracy theories or lies about certain minority groups without any financial incentive to do so, and I'd rather this didn't get money from my taxes and a government stamp of approval that such garbage is actually "information". On the other hand, I don't really want a situation where it's really easy for "independent" journalists to get distribution and an income stream, but only if they write stuff the government approves of.

[Iv]

A guy like Alex Jones would still qualify as journalist (assuming he really is independent, I am not sure about that) and yes, crazy conspiracy theorist would get the "information" label too.

This is the double-edged sword of plurality. But consider that: if you were pro-transgender rights in the 60s there were no way to sort you from the crazies: you would have been advocating as a choice what was officially a mental disease. They still existed and in 2017 their voices seem much more acceptable.

Finding the voice of 2040's progressives comes at the cost of letting the conspiracy theorist and the lizxardmen spotters have a say too.

[notahacker]

I'm quite happy for conspiracy theorists to be allowed to "have a say". I'm considerably less happy with the idea that people's taxes should pay to promote their work as "information" inherently more trustworthy Le Monde

And frankly, I'm far less worried about people promoting unfashionable views (who, whether trans activists or "911 truthers" tend to be pretty self-motivated anyway) and far more worried about the amount of people that want to spend their life writing generic rants about whatever has annoyed them most recently who could really use a thin veneer of credibility and government-subsidised libel lawyer...

[morgante]

It's not clear to me what good this does.

Say a narrow set of "information" sources follow this model and produce quality journalism. Meanwhile the vast majority of traffic continues to go to "entertainment" journalism and shoddy reports spread widely.

[Iv]

It is not a proposal to kill entertainment media, it is a proposal to make it easier to make informative journalism. The theory being that a plurality of information sources leads to a better informed population and that if newspapers have less to worry about satisfying shareholders or advertisers, they will do a better job.

I think that the most important point for the US situation is the non-concentration condition, preventing one person or company from owning several information media posing as different entities, masking the lack of plurality. It would prevent this kind of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

Arguably this is more a solution to the situation we have in France. In the US it looks like you have people like the Koch brothers who would not mind running newspapers at a cost to promote propaganda. It would still make it more expensive as it would have to compete against people who would have little costs and privileged access to primary sources.

It does not solve all the problems of society and information though. IMO, the fact that so many Americans confuse information and entertainment is an education problem, not a media one.

[TeMPOraL]

> IMO, the fact that so many Americans confuse information and entertainment is an education problem, not a media one.

Then there's the Tesla vs. Top Gear case. Top Gear spewed bullshit about Tesla's car, got sued, and won, with the court saying that Top Gear is an entertainment show and has no obligation to be factually accurate. And yet, it's widely known that people treat this show as an information source, not a comedy.

And then there's British Tabloids vs. EU case. A British tabloid will write some utter and complete bullshit about some EU regulation, and then it gets picked up by countries on the continent and reprinted in the quality news sources as facts. So what's understood as entertainment by the Brits gets presented as facts elsewhere.

I think this is not an American problem, and not people problem. It's a media problem too.

[Iv]

The UK judges ruled that people are not supposed to base opinions on an entertainment shows.

> it's widely known that people treat this show as an information source, not a comedy.

It would have helped Tesla to be able to point out that Top Gear is not real journalism but entertainment and point at the actual reviews made by actual journalists.

> And then there's British Tabloids vs. EU case

I don't know how it happens in other countries but most of the time when a French news quote a UK tabloid it is mostly to point fingers at them and laugh.

> I think this is not an American problem, and not people problem.

Sure, it is a people problem. That US has and makes less efforts than other countries at solving. I mean, EU is not perfect, but there are not many countries where the biggest political party downright opposes teaching critical thinking skills in schools:

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