[oersted]

Germany already has something like that, it's the Rundfunkbeitrag: a mandatory monthly fee of €18.36 per household, intended to fund public broadcasting (ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio).

The BBC is funded in a similar fashion, and is very competitive alongside commercial news media. Other countries fund it from regular tax revenues.

A good public news service that is actually widely watched and legitimately valuable is possible. It's never perfectly independent, but many countries have done it successfully to a reasonable degree.

But yes, you were saying that it could instead be funnelled onto an organisation of each tax-payer's choosing instead of being centralised. It's an interesting idea.

You essentially just force everyone to have a news subscription, whichever they want. I suppose you would need an approved list, which always carries some bias.

I think health-insurance works similarly in the Netherlands. Healthcare is private, but everyone is pretty much forced to have insurance and they are tightly regulated. In practice it's very similar to other countries that have public healthcare, but you can choose your provider.

[pydry]

The BBC is state funded media, largely supplying state propaganda, paid for with a tax.

The only quirk is that you can avoid the tax by not owning a TV and that it sometimes used to hold the government to account in the days before David Kelly was murdered.

[Aromasin]

While I do disgree with the "state funded media scope" - I'd go as far as saying the BBC has become so fearful to rock the boat in any way that it is at risk of becoming a redundant source - I do think the lack of "competition" for BBC funding leads to a worse journalistic rigour. It's not the centre of excellence for journlism it once was, and is often looked down on when compared to other paid news outlets like the Economist, Atlantic, the FT, et ceterea. Adding an element of competition into the equation could make for better journalism, but equally, that would likely require more funding in the end.