You have nothing to charge me with! Or if you do it will never stick.

OP's phone kept posting to keep Lemmy active until the bitter end. o7

BBC is publicly funded but they collect the money themselves trough the TV license, they are not funded by the government trough taxes and they make a shit ton of money from commercial operations, like selling shows and formats to foreign networks. That’s probably the best way to keep an independent state network with minimal government meddling. Though we’ve seen that individuals with power at the network can bias the news reporting. Like BBC definitely favors the political right.

I think it would be great to publicly fund journalism. And make public funding contingent on whether news sources accurately represent the full substance of their source material, practiced evidence-based fact-checking, and had rules to prevent the selective application of either of those first two conditions, and by omission bias their audience.

The other nice thing for "state funded media" is they often have translations for international audiences

For example CBC / Radio-Canada also have an international page, Radio-Canada International offered in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic etc.

I honestly don't think this is a bad idea for the US...for now at least. Right now your typical options for official statements from government leaders are either through (1) politically polarized media like CNN or Fox, (2) paid subscription to better journalism, or (3) social media monopolies like Twitter (X) and Instagram. Can we really not fund something entirely independent of a mega-corporation to get official info out?

Journalism student here. Tbh in my experience I have come to the conclusion that news stations should never be state owned. I think state funding for news is good but I think the best solution is a non profit ngo group running the news. When the government owns the news they can change the news and manipulate what facts get shown as is the case with the BBC.

The US government broadcaster is the Voice of America. For a long time it was unavailable to Americans (propaganda laws), but is now. Some Europeans may be familiar with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that is also US-funded by the same agency as the Voice of America.

We also have NPR and public broadcasting (PBS), both have news. They receive government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is supposed to be objective although there have been issues in recent history. They also have corporate donors, which could affect objectivity.

Should have long term funding structures in place (longer than election cycles) so that you dont have different political parties influencing things once elected into power

Well there are 3 alternatives.

Ads, which everyone on here would endorse blocking, so that’s out.

All journalism becomes volunteer work, running off of optional donations, which seems unlikely :D

Or all journalism becomes publicly funded via-taxes. This is probably the optimal option but I think most people would agree that ALL journalism being government funded has a ton of risks.

This is because the Internet killed journalism's revenue model. In the past a big metro daily had three main revenue streams; subscriptions, newsstand sales and classifieds/advertising. Newsstand sales is the only leg that didn't get gutted by the internet, so in order to keep it viable, they have to charge more than they used to, but even then, it's just not really cost efficient and many major metro dailies no longer print a hard copy version.

One problem with journalism is that since everyone consumes it in one way or another, everyone imagines that they have an informed opinion about it, but unless you went to j-school and/or have worked in the field, you probably don't.

Because classified ads used to pay for the paper.

Heck, 'The Advertiser' used to be a popular name for newspapers.

Newspapers used to be full of ads and were also subscription based. You could buy a one off from a paper for relatively cheap, but their primary income was ads and subscribers.

This seems like a common theme. There are just so many things to subscribe to: Netflix, Spotify, New York Times, Amazon, Audible, individual app store applications, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, NPR+, Disney+, etc. Just keeping track of it all is complicated. And all content producers want to maintain the subscription framework, too, passing the costs on to us. This is a little off topic, but it still bugs me that Netflix became a content producer. I think it would have been a cleaner/cheaper arrangement if they'd remained a subscription service only.

With so many shows getting canceled, or even un-confirmed and then obliterated from existence all for tax write offs, I'm kinda soured on Streaming these days.

Hopefully the WGA and SAG strikes are successful and result in streaming improving again, back to how it felt during the mid 2010s.

Please tell me you aren't getting your news from Disney. But seriously, a halfway decent local paper is probably more worth your attention than the latest attention grabbing headline at the NYT. Good choice.

Unskipable ads when I'm browsing my files on my phone, how fucking obnoxious can you possibly make them?

I agree with most of that, but I feel like we weren’t using the same Internet 15 years ago. There were still ample popups and popunders, many of which you couldn’t easily close (more than a few did the funny ‘you are an idiot’ trick of just open windows faster than you can close them to me). They were loud, both visually but also they would actually play sound in non-video pages (sometimes multiple at once). Most of them were either disgust or porn based (or the really funny meme of both at the same time). And there were so. Many. Viruses. I feel like advertisers have never been particularly respectful of the end user, and the main difference is that now they’re actively spying, where they maybe weren’t 20 years ago.

Idk, 15 years ago I was watching cable and 1/3 of my time was spent subjected to ads on a paid service. I think I prefer them now lol

Firefox has an autoplay block setting, and I've never had it fail me.

That’s why I use an inverted ad-block list. I see ads unless they get intrusive or unreasonable, and then I enable blocking on the site.

When I had more income I paid for the NYT, but tbh they've made enough questionable editorial decisions lately that I've decided it wasn't worth it. The Guardian isn't paywalled at least.

I’m defending the right for people to make a profit from their labour 🤷‍♂️ even if ads aren’t my preference either

A little bird told me you're in cognizance of the way to finance online journalism without depending on ads and subscriptions of readers. That's a good news. Care to share how?

There's nothing wrong with advertising in of itself, society has lived with advertisements for goods and services for a long time. Unless you're unreasonably susceptible to suggestion you should be able to safely navigate them. Some sites take the mick with how they present them but they have to make money somehow.

This is why we can't have nice things.

This actually isnt a terrible strategy. Right now the news sites require profit for survival. Leading them to do well frankly... Whatever it takes to make that happen. Which leads us to the road we are on now. If their survival was subsidized and they were simply paid to provide the service of good journalism. This would be beneficial as journalism at its core is a PUBLIC service. That is currently being sold as a commercial commodity.

I am for it

I never said free, I said they needed to adapt their business model. I also never said the reason didn't make sense, but the ramifications remain the same even if there is good reason for the practice. Whether by design or not, they still share culpability.

What's wrong with 12ft?

What's 12ft.io?

And that no one else on your public IP has reached it, since it seems to be IP-based.

There are so many times I try to read an NYT article and it says I've reached my limit when I haven't even visited the site in the past month.

Sadly, NPR is nowhere near as unbiased as they used to be. I listened to it recently, and it's just not good anymore. They engage in both sides whataboutism, only ask softball questions, and generally seem to toe the line of appearing neutral but not risking their corporate funding.

Now, if they didn't need corporate funding, that would be ideal. I believe that would lead to more unbiased reporting.

Adverts have been in newspapers since forever. They're giving you the full experience.

The NYT is one of the biggest, most recognised publications worldwide. If they don't meet your requirements, I don't think that's a realistic expectation

I never let my battery get below 50% if I can help it.

that doesn't sound great for the battery

Why?

Genuinely I let mine drop to 5% before charging, I think letting it discharges makes the battery last longer.

Most of the time you can delete modern paywalls from the website by editing the HTML in your browser.

https://www.resetera.com/...

There are also several extensions that claim they can, uBlock is one of them.

Most paywalls can be bypassed by disabling JavaScript, which Unlock Origin can do on a site by site basis if you click on the advanced icon

News agency should've been operated by non-profit organizations IMO. The non-profit organizations can be funded by grants, donations, etc (e.g. like how wikimedia is funded).

I'd rather my taxes go to public services than being diluted into the pockets of middle-men. Publishers are still be valuable, but they have to adapt like everyone else. Education, healthcare, and information... sounds like a recipe for too much equality; better to stomp that out and continue forth, like the term "future" doesn't exist for everyone

Why would I want change when I'm finally getting the hang of things? That sounds difficult and scary, and I might have to adjust my lifestyle... and for what? Other people!? Morals!? Justice!? We already have those, otherwise I would've never made it to where I am today... backslash-fucking-s

If democracy wasn't constantly undermined by greed, we might actually solve real problems. But problems are too far in the future for me, when I'll no longer be alive to care. Continue status-quo than, nothing we can do

Taxes are the subscription fee of life.

I meant like the early days.

And ABC

Ah yes. The conservative government decided they would be in charge of choosing the chairman, chose a major party doner, and the BBC now kiss the conservative government's ass whenever possible. Flawless.

They probably still do a lot of those, but recently they've been using opinion writers to create outrage bait with writings they should know better than to print.

In the last few years they have been willing to post a large amount of transphobic nonsense. To the point where early in the year almost 1000 current or former contributors signed an open letter complaining about the issue (and made a callback to the paper doing roughly the same thing with gay and lesbian people in the 60s through 80s)

Well, I'm from the UK and when they report on anything to do with us it is almost always completely wrong. Like they've never even visited the country.

They were "the paper of record" but they've fallen a long ways in the digital era. They were always slightly left and pro corporate, but as they transitioned to online they dropped in quality big time. They purposely make the line between editorial and news far more vague and pump out a ton of articles that are basically propaganda.

They do still occasionally do a good thing every now and then. They developed some impressive ways to display articles alongside pictures in a way that was satisfying on a website and not just like print. They also do occasionally write a decent article or have a deep dive into a topic that does its due diligence, but it's becoming more rare.