[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.