[TheDong]

Not mentioned is taxes.

A free press is important to democracy, so the government should move some tax money to journalists, and then this link could instead be to a taxpayer funded site (like NPR) instead of to a for-profit ad-powered spam-site run by billionaires who pay journalists as little as possible while pocketing as much as they can.

Unfortunately, PBS and NPR are so severely under-funded that they need to run donation drives and can't do journalism of this level.

[jjmarr]

We adopted this in Canada and Facebook/Instagram have banned news since 2023.

The idea is that social media companies offer summaries of news that replace reading the article for most people. Thanks to commenters bypassing paywalls they can get the full article too!

News companies cannot effectively negotiate with large social media companies for a slice of ad revenue due to discrepancies in size.

The government proposed a compulsory licensing scheme where websites with an "asymmetric bargaining position" (i.e Big Tech) that link to news must pay.

Google is paying $100 million,[1] Meta walked away from the negotiating table.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-bill-c18-on...

[raw_anon_1111]

And in Australia most of that money went to Murdoch controlled media.

[raw_anon_1111]

I can’t believe someone actually makes this suggestion after seeing what has happened in the last year. The Trump administration cut funding for PBS and NPR because he didn’t like what they were saying.

This isn’t new. The government has been trying to cut funding for PBS since the 60s.

Why would anyone want the government to fund the press? How would you actually expect it to cover government corruption?

[metabagel]

Republicans have been trying to cut funding for PBS.

[raw_anon_1111]

What’s your point? A press funded by the government is not going to go out of its way to bite the hand that feeds it.

[microtonal]

It functions fine in many countries though. E.g. a lot of European countries have public broadcasters paid by tax money and they sure do criticize and mock government.

Commercial broadcasters tend to lean towards entertainment (needs ad revenue), so news becomes entertainment too.

It works as long as the state and public believes in democracy, accountability, etc. It’s very vulnerable, but everything in democracy is. Democracy and free press can only work if the population also defends it, which is what is failing in the US. The majority of population does not want to defend democracy.

[master-lincoln]

Huh? You mentioned yourself that PBS and NPR did. So that proves your point invalid.

[raw_anon_1111]

So my point is invalid that you shouldn’t depend on government funding of media because if the government doesn’t like what you say they will remove funding when that’s exactly what they did?

But I think the hard on for PBS that conservatives have is that PBS admitted gay people exist.

Back in the 60s PBS was controversial partially because it showed black and white kids playing together on Sesane Street…

[master-lincoln]

Well it worked for 80 years it seems and now that the USA does not have a democratically acting government anymore they want to get rid of the funding.

Press that does not need to be profitable is extremely valuable to a democracy as it can openly talk about any issues without a conflict of interest.

Good democracies have that funding and no meddling of politicians with the content enshrined in their constitution.