[gkoberger]

I bet OpenAI genuinely believes they're using their money to help free media exist. And TBPN genuinely believes this is the right choice for economic freedom so they can continue to operate. I bet they even had a convo such as "we'll never tell you what to say," and both sides genuinely believed it.

But this never ends well. Even if there's never a conversation about it, directly, the implication is there.

I don't care about TBPN, specifically. I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently. (And I say this as someone who pays for some media, but not nearly enough. I don't have $10/mo for every outlet that deserves it.)

EDIT: sama basically said what I said he would: https://x.com/sama/status/2039773740586918137

[KaiserPro]

> I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently.

I agree, but this is 100% not the right model. Altman is not the right person to be in control of a media organisation. He shows little willing to understand anything of how the world works currently, let alone something out of his wheel house.

[conorcleary]

Or, they know exactly what they wield when they take over.

[tadfisher]

Right, it's simple mathematics. It costs X energy units to raise a human to adulthood, and Y energy units to train a frontier language model. What's so hard about this?

[kartika36363]

i am gonna miss the ad reads

the segways to the ad reads are always one of their funniest bits

[dist-epoch]

> "we'll never tell you what to say,"

TBPN had almost all the big AI names in there, and they were extremely friendly. This would have been a problem anyway. They are not the "tough questions" kind of place.

[lobb-deep]

Fairly good encapsulation of chomskey's manufactured consent. TBPN was chosen precisely because they'll never have to tell them what to say.

[keiferski]

You can unfortunately see this across the media spectrum. There seem to be basically two paths:

1. Cozy up to the big money in your industry, have them on for PR interviews with easy questions, and eventually get sponsored / acquired by them. I hesitate to even call this journalism, it’s more just sponsored entertainment.

2. Build a personal brand as someone known for being particularly critical / investigative / etc. This will undoubtedly make you far less money, and you’ll probably end up shilling ads for gold coins in between asking for Patreon supporters.

I’ve always wondered if a government-funded (in a way that cannot be manipulated) organization whose sole purpose is to criticize everyone would ever work. It might even need to be run anonymously.

[coloneltcb]

say what you will about TBPN, but it was never objective journalism

[grvdrm]

In a way it also looks like a16z buying their own marketing blog/news unit. Echo chamber. I happen to like listening to TBPN for discovery purposes.

[MrSkelter]

It doesn’t work for that either. That’s the point. It’s akin to looking at a Texan middle grade schoolbook and then concluding everything significant was invented in America.

[grvdrm]

Sorry - what doesn't work? Discovery?

I think it's possible to listen and discover things (e.g. companies I don't know) without further succumbing to opinions or other comments about those companies.

[swyx]

(and the fact that they proudly wore it on their sleeve and shone a lamp on it is complete and absolute genius)

[heliumtera]

>I bet OpenAI genuinely believes they're using their money to help free media exist

>TBPN genuinely believes this is the right choice for economic freedom

Company literally sold to someone else, we now conclude they believe to achieve economic freedom.

>Company genuinely believing anything.

Yep, it is 2026 and words mean nothing in, we better ooga booga or something

[unfitted2545]

Obviously this will never happen, but what do you think about a system where there's a "media" fund from the government that gets distributed to several independent media outlets?

The decision on who and how much to fund gets decided by a randomised group in the population, like jury duty, maybe every 2 years?

I don't know if this could potentially make the media companies worse at reporting facts as they would try and raise money by appealing to people, but with enough competition it should sort its self out as long as there's no outside funding?

[okanat]

> Obviously this will never happen, but what do you think about a system where there's a "media" fund from the government that gets distributed to several independent media outlets?

This is how German system works actually. So, it DID HAPPEN. The German government has only some control over the budget but the actual media companies control the content themselves. Every resident has to pay a monthly contribution. This is a contribution to an independent account / budget for media only. It is not a tax that goes into a common pot that politics can decide to take out.

There are national outlets like ZDF, Tagesschau, Deutschlandradio and regional ones like Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Bayerischer Rundfunk. Each design and present their own programmes.

See more details on: https://www.rundfunkbeitrag.de/welcome/english

[arw0n]

> There are national outlets like ZDF, Tagesschau, Deutschlandradio and regional ones like Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Bayerischer Rundfunk. Each design and present their own programmes.

Well yes, but calling them politically independent is a bit of a stretch. A 2024 study found 52% of board members (Rundfunkrat) have a party membership (~2% of the general population is part of a party). [0]

To take one example you mention, the ZDF-Fernsehrat is dominated by party members (33/60).Notably only by the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the SocDems (SPD), with 2 green members and 1 member of the SSW. Neither the left party, nor the far right AfD have any representation, despite accounting for roughly 30% of the national vote. Religious communities have signifigantly more representation (9), than the scientific community (0). [1]

Public media was always a tool to help create and maintain a societal overton window of shared truth and identity, and as such very helpful in keeping Germany united and democratic. There was however also always clearly immoral and untrue directions taken for ideological reasons or political convenience, for example the support of Apartheid South Africa til its fall, and the recent biased coverage of Israel. Many other topics as well, like immigration, covid and the war in Russia, are presented in a way that does not align with significant amounts of the german population: We are currently witnessing this overton window breaking apart completely, in other words, German public media has failed in its primary purpose.

[0] https://www.medienpolitik.net/aktuelle-themen/die-politik-is...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZDF-Fernsehrat

[xp84]

Maybe I'm biased as an American, but if this were to be proposed here, who decides which outlets are blessed with the government money and the corresponding air of legitimacy of being an official public broadcaster?

[collinmcnulty]

I would like to see a system like New York's campaign finance vouchers, where individual citizens get to decide where the public funds are directed. That way you have to have an audience and you have to appeal to people's sense of what's truly valuable, rather than just trying to farm views.

[tshaddox]

> The decision on who and how much to fund gets decided by a randomised group in the population, like jury duty, maybe every 2 years?

Why not fill all government positions via random selection? The ancient Athenians thought that if your government officials were chosen by a process other than sortition, you don't have a democracy.

[gkoberger]

I mean, in theory I like this. But look what happened to NPR and PBS; it was ultimately at the behest of the president. They lost their revenue for not saying the "right" things.

[unfitted2545]

That's true, and in the UK we've just removed jury duty trials for some crimes at the snap of a finger.

[toomuchtodo]

This was reversed upon judicial review. Checks and balances.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5768399/npr-pbs-trump-f...

[valleyer]

The CPB, the legal entity that the government actually funded (and which in turn supplied some of the funding for PBS/NPR and its stations) had its funding rescinded by Congress (under HR4 last year), and has since shuttered.

It's not clear how, even under that recent ruling, that rescission will be undone.

[toomuchtodo]

Reincorporate? You can just do things. Direct a human to take the required meatspace actions as the judiciary to recreate whatever legal entity previously existed, open a bank account, fund it, and start distributing funds.

If you need the Treasury to initiate the EFT and they refuse to, send law enforcement to effectuate the funds transfer.

[valleyer]

In this case, you cannot simply force Congress to appropriate money to a reincorporated CPB -- unless you were to get a second ruling from a judge that the rescission was unconstitutional.

The Trump EO was deemed unconstitutional because he specifically called out that it didn't like the "left-wing propaganda" (his words) in PBS/NPR programming. Congress's rescission is ostensibly for budgetary reasons -- even if we all know in our heart that they were following Trump's orders.

What we can do is elect a Congress that will revive the CPB. Here's hoping.

[postflopclarity]

the damage is already done.

[toomuchtodo]

Damage is done constantly in human existence, all around us. This is no different. Failure is when you stop trying. If you’re tired, rest, don’t quit.

[greenchair]

I know it is hard to see the bias when you are in the bubble along with them.

[gkoberger]

Great, show me something they consistently misrepresent.

I agree that everyone has, by definition, some bias, but NPR/PBS tend to avoid editorialization significantly more than their counterparts.

[skeeter2020]

PBS brings on Brooks Capehart to discuss politics. Having two partisan players from opposite sides of spectrum is a good way to get some balance. The fact that they agree so often on the fundamentals tells me the US is cooked.

[hunterpayne]

Ahem, their reporting on nuclear power was often non-scientific and just plain wrong. In fact anything having to do with the environment was generally pretty poor from a factual and scientific basis. Their reporting on politics was consistently rated as one of the most extreme in the US media.

I do wish they could do a 'just the facts' reporting as I think that is worth some taxpayer money to support. But by any measure, from any media watchdog, they were one of the most extreme and least accurate media source. That you can't see that says a lot more about you than PBS/NPR. Hell, there are 20 year old SNL skits mocking their coverage for its very narrow POV.

[vostrocity]

There was a 2020 US presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, who proposed something like this.[1]

1. https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/andrew-yang-the-most-meme-...

[riffraff]

This is partially the case in Italy, though it changed over the years.

The assignment of funds is based on refunding prints/sales, so money goes to help newspapers that do print "something" of interest to the public.

The problem is that people don't want "independent" journalism, they want "my ideas" journalism.

Which.. still good somehow? Italy had plenty of newspapers which were the literal extension of political parties and a few independent ones in the past and still does.

But these days, they are all dying anyway.

[jrflowers]

I am sure that what you mentioned was said, but it is surprisingly difficult to have a conversation in a room full of these

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_eWdX4qBUyQ3D

[tootie]

Bezos said WaPo would retain independence and it did. For a while. Then he meddled to the point of ruin.

[vasco]

There's no way a popular show like that needs money, they were probably millionaires already with sponsorships. Why are we pretending these people are poor or need help to survive?

[Rebuff5007]

> I bet OpenAI genuinely believes

What does this even mean? Who is being "genuine"? This is far to naive a take for a company thats burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, and constantly striving to set the tone of AI and their own supremacy.

[slumberlust]

Its conceding, or sidestepping, a common debate point yo focus on the crux or the issue.