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Comment by jay_kyburz | Hacker News Reader

>>> But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth?

If "journalism" is entertainment, but nobody wants to pay for it, then it has no use and we should let it die.

If it's an important resource required by our society, (so that we are not ignorant of whats going on in our neighborhood and world), then it's not entertainment, it's an essential service, and it should be publicly funded like our other essential services.

As we transition to publicly funded "news" (things that happened) we can examine the various formats, and design them to to be easy to query and verify.

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While publicly funded news works well in some places, there is an inherent conflict of interest when the publicly funded journalists start investigating the source of their funding.

This is especially the case when a proto-strongman is attempting to consolidate power.

Publicly funded journalism cannot be the only way it works.

(I say this as a left-learning person generally supportive of public funding).

(Also, "entertainment" vs "an essential service" is a false dichotomy)

The solution (albeit not a perfect one) is to make the decision on funding independent from political parties. For example, have a comittee (or jury) that is recruited randomly from the general public and decides on the plan for next year's budget.

Or you can just put your own money towards media outlets that you think are providing more truthful content. Why would I want to give my money to someone else to decide what they feel is objective news? No thanks.

What you want is control over what other people think.

I think the solutiion is that both are needed.

corporate funded news can investigate the government, and government funded news can investigate corporations.

We have government funded police and judiciary sending government officials to jail when they break the law, I think we could set up an independent journalism arm as well to publicly report what is going on in the halls of parliament.

The vast majority of essential services (e.g. food, housing) are not publicly funded, so the analogy doesn't really work. Also, there are obvious reasons why government-funded news might have problems, if its essential service involves investigating the government.

>The vast majority of essential services (e.g. food, housing) are not publicly funded, so the analogy doesn't really work

Those aren't "services", so there's that.

In many countries, however, power companies, the water company, central banks, rails, the hospital system, universities, etc, are, or were before the neoliberal attack, public.

And, of course, to the point, many have a state paid public broadcaster for news and other programs (BBC, France does, Germany iirc does, Italy, etc) - and it's not some niche channels delegated to upper middle class viewers (like, I think, NPR is, if that's indeed public).

Publicly funded news will never be independent or truthful. You can't give tax money to the government and let them control money flow to media outlets and expect them report truthfully and honestly. That's a recipe for disaster. All you need to do is look at totalitarian governments and how they control their media. You will NEVER have a free and independent media if it's money is coming from public funding.

I have no idea why people think the answer to fixing a shitty government is handing more money over to them and hoping they'll do the appropriate thing with it when they prove the opposite time and time again.

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