[unstatusthequo]

Do we think news outlets owned by the government or the “warm collective” would be any better at unbiased reporting or not disseminating fake news or unjust influence? Is there any organization or entity structure today that is trustworthy enough to even handle those sorts of organizations. It appears fraud is rampant in our government, so why trust them any more than some random dude? Frankly it seems the odds might be better with one random guy not being on the take.

[servercobra]

I think the odds are better if it's not a random guy who also already has a bunch of power (e.g. Bezos with his considerable influence buying up and weaponizing WaPo). I personally think that consolidation of power is a reasonable thing to prevent. I'm not sure how you could block someone like Zuckerberg who started his own new media, other than the government, which as you pointed out has its own issues.

[fcantournet]

Historically news outlet run as public service (with sufficient guardrails for autonomy) such as the BBC, PBS, France Television, Arte (naming only those I know well) have produce much better news coverage than the privately owned ones.

OTOH the concept of independent public institution and general checks and balances seems to have been entirely forgotten, so maybe that's not a solution for 21st century.

An alternative would be communally owned media (50/50 by readership and journalists), with simple direct tax incentive to fund them (equal amounts of $ per person)

[CaptainJack]

Having first hand experience of all of the named public services, I beg to differ heavily. These corporations tend to be heavily left-leaning, with no real guardrails preventing this. The consequence is pretty biased coverage, under the guise of a "trust-us, we are here for the greater good".

Look at the handling of Middle-East by BBC, the Zucman tax at France Television, or the current allegations of fraud in some communities in the US.

My current take is that it is really hard to get a fair unbiased coverage, unless you actually state that you will strive to hire and promote both sides. If these corporations had to publish the composition/promotion/pay of their newsroom across the political spectrum (as they do for example by gender), you may start to have fair unbiased coverage. But many journalists working there see it as their job to describe "not the reality as it happens, but rather as it ought to be" (to quote the CEO of France Television). We should acknowledge that people are biased, and measure the balance of biases rather than assert there is no bias because they serve the greater good.

[banannaise]

Public interest stories are left-leaning only in that they tend to oppose the wielders of centralized power, and centralized power is generally a right-leaning construct.

[tehjoker]

This is a very funny take since all of these stations are anti-communist. This is inter-right wing sectarianism.

[zozbot234]

So everyone to the right of tankies gets lumped together as "right wing" in your view of the political spectrum? That's not very helpful.

[tehjoker]

That's objectively true. They're center-left or center-right. They're certainly not democratic socialists (who are the barest left of the left). The parent is complaining that there is some objectivity at all in liberal/center-right media, that it isn't calling for pure repression by force of middle eastern people and recognizes they sometimes suffer from aggression in ways that are understandable to human beings.

None of these outlets object to this repression being meted out, they only care that it is done in a way that is respectable. A left wing take would criticize the imperialist nature of these wars of aggression and genocide and examine the economic, class, and other social dimensions that cause these events to occur and call for a social revolution via means that are electoral or otherwise. A left-leaning liberal take would say something like "man it's crazy they don't respect the UN charter or even US laws". This should give some objective sense for how rightward our discourse has been drawn.

[NitpickLawyer]

I'll be honest, I'm not an expert on this, and I don't have a perfect solution. I just think we should try to do something, even if it's not perfect.

There are some professions with codes of conduct. Some are internal, some ar legislated (i.e. fiduciary duty for lawyers, financial advisors, etc). We also have some concepts like public utility and public interest. Maybe we should look there (again, ask the experts I'm sure there are people who study this for a living). Maybe slowly bring in duties for "public interest" related fields. Maybe at the management level. Maybe come up with ownership structures that decouple power from financial incentives (a la voting shares vs. normal shares) and impose them for such businesses.

I fully agree with you that gov ownership of media would be a disaster. I'm not proposing that in any way. Just ... better ways to do it than we do today.