[turndown]

Obviously this is a lazier approach than others that could be taken, but I do think that it's completely fair that a state run news agency would be given less inherent credibility on a wide range of topics(read: any that might effect the nation in a positive/negative way.) How can you guarantee the objectivity of a by-design mouthpiece for a government? You can't.

[wahern]

The BBC?

I'd be the last person to defend RT, but the cost/benefit of blacklisting such a site belies atrocious foresight. Google is opening up a huge can of worms for what will be very little gain in terms of improving the signal-to-noise ratio of mass media consumption.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter are all doing a very poor job of countering the backlash on Capitol Hill. That's partly their own doing as they willfully perpetuated the myth of the magic of their technology. But rather than reign in the misperceptions they're doubling down to save face and making very concrete, very stupid promises.

[beefsack]

The Australian ABC is another example of a state supported news service which would probably be harmful to penalise.

[bruce_one]

If anything the ABC probably has the opposite slant to what GP was talking about (ie slanted against the government rather than for it).

Irrespective, I believe it would be harmful to penalise...

[yostrovs]

Its slant depends on who is the prime minister.

[Sone7]

The BBC are awful. The way they covered Corbyn in the last election was sick and horrifying. They are no longer the example to use in these situations, if they ever really were.

[nailer]

A couple of days ago Alexa gave me a BBC briefing where the newsreader referred to 'President Xi' and 'Mister Trump'. They're not even trying to hide it at this point.

[indubitable]

So I expect you'd support banning NPR, BBC, ABC Australia, NHK, Al Jazeera, and the numerous other state run or funded news organizations? And what of news organization that could be shown to be willing to get in bed with government? This [1] video is of a hot mic moment between Bill Clinton and Larry King. It's from just before Clinton was elected, but has relevance today for rather self evident reasons.

- Larry King: It's crazy - Ted Turner changed the world. He's a big fan of yours.

- Bill Clinton: Is he?

- Larry King: He would, uh, serve you - you know what I mean?

- Bill Clinton: You're kiddin?

- Larry King: Oh you'd be surprised - he's ready what's he got left in life to gain? I'd call him after you're elected. Think about it.

The reality is that nearly all media today is spiraling towards partisan and biased tabloidism, and so this action seems completely arbitrary. We can try to spin it as being "election interference" but let's imagine we played a similar game as we have with Russia, with the UK. And we qualify anybody who posted on issues even tangentially related to the US election from an England IP, with an England phone number, etc as an "English agent." How many would there be? Or even vice versa how many "American agents" are there that tried to "influence" Brexit?

Unless there's any form of consistency and objectivity in these actions, this looks more like a witch hunt than anything else.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCUIlV-AKY4

[ZoeZoeBee]

In a bit of full circle irony, RT is where you can find Larry King today https://www.rt.com/shows/larry-king-now/

[cannonedhamster]

NPR Isn't a "state" funded organization. The vast majority of funding comes from listeners like you and corporations (not CPB). Republicans cut most of that funding remember?

[lucaspiller]

How can you guaranteee the objectivity of a private, for-profit, media agency? If a company like Monsanto wanted to bury a story, I’m sure they wouldn’t have any issues knowing the right people in CNN and Fox to take out for dinner.

[rohit2412]

Does BBC fit the bill? Al Jazeera?

[harry8]

Just as an aside, if you'd asked me a decade ago whether Al-Jazeera would have the highest quality journalism of any institutional news source and superior to the BBC I would have probably suggested this was vanishingly unlikely.

Not sure I'd get my news on Qatar from that source though.

[alkonaut]

BBC is public service, not a British state propaganda outlet.

RT/Sputnik etc are state sponsored channels. A public service outlet is critical of government, not its mouthpiece.

I think this should just be solved algorithmically. Google assigns importance to linked articles and if you assign massive negative importance to fake news outlets and articles then those who reference them or report the same things should drop in ranking.

Obviously you’ll need an army of people to decide what is fake news - but I think that’s unavoidable. I beyond the point where I think people can “see all the facts and decide for themselves what to believe in”. It’s unfortunate that we have to hope for some global megacorp to solve our news filtering so people don’t do stupid things.