[jmcmichael]

This implies that only people who have the means and desire to pay for accurate news will get it. Given that accurate information about the world, our society, and its politics is required for making accurate decisions about how to vote and spend one's time and money, shouldn't we start treating journalism as a public good and funding it independent of anyone's ability to come up with a business model that will work?

[mscasts]

My country (Sweden) has a state-sponsonsored news outlet. It is one of the most biased ones.

Several other countries in Europe has the same model and it just doesn't work.

[jmcmichael]

Yeah, state-sponsored news has its own problems. The state should probably be the main focus of news organizations. Having the State, target of journalists' investigations, hold the purse strings is perhaps an even bigger problem than the market.

I think there might be a solution where state funds support a local-news system, where the funds are institutionally separated from influence - maybe similar to how the Fed is supported by the State yet remains politically separate from it (ideally).

There are institutional structures beyond the state and market that can produce public goods.