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Journalism Is a Public Good and Should Be Publicly Funded
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Ehhh... I'm not so sure. If it's publicly funded, what incentive is there to investigate government corruption?
Would Watergate still have happened if Nixon had the ability to cut the WaPo purse strings?
if that funding were guaranteed and beyond the influence of those government officials, then they wouldn’t have any fear of revenge-based budget cuts.
this could be accomplished by putting control of the funding into the hands of multiple levels of committee oversight so that no one person or even a single committee could threaten it.
That's the problem, when it comes to government funding, nothing is guaranteed. :)
Witness:
https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA
That’s why I suggested multiple levels of oversight. Also, they kept their funding.
They did, because Mr. Rogers defended it. If he hadn't been there to step up it likely would have been cut.
That's the problem. You get one party in power who doesn't like it for some reason, it's gone.
What you’ve shown is the system -democracy - working as intended. I’m not sure how that’s a criticism.
except your “evidence” proves the exact opposite.
Kinda like how Reagan removed the fairness doctrine... Oh, sure, any ol' President could have it restored... 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Obama, 2+ years of Biden... Hey, it's only been since 1987... 36 years... I'm sure it will be back any day now...
what does that have to do with government funding of journalism?
My argument is that anything the government grants you can also be taken away... and if the counter is "But it can be restored too..."
Yeah, still waiting on the Fairness Doctrine, which, yeah, also has a direct impact on journalism.
it’s easy to win your own arguments when you put words in my mouth. why even bother pretending to have a debate when all you want is to put on a performance?
you can wallow in defeatist nihilism. I have better things to do.
this is why we protect the speech and the journalism.. it's like the whole vaccine argument all over again..
It depends entirely on how the funding arrangement is enshrined. Some mechanisms are easier to undo and some are practically impossible to undo.
So while you could say that nothing in our world is guaranteed, it’s going too far to say we shouldn’t have publicly funded media because any old president can just snap his fingers and make it all go away. That’s not the case.
And even if funding were easy to pull, that would mean no public media until someone else snaps their fingers and restores it.
Kinda like how Reagan removed the fairness doctrine... Oh, sure, any ol' President could have it restored... 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Obama, 2+ years of Biden... Hey, it's only been since 1987... 36 years... I'm sure it will be back any day now...
Thanks for sharing this.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/fKy7ljRr0AA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
this is why universities have endowments. and why they become convulted messes.
of course, they don't use them like they should, but that's another issue entirely.
sadly people are greedy and short sighted, no matter the institution. often the committees want to reward themselves above all else.
That’s the problem with charity— free reporting becomes a privilege bestowed to a select a few by private institutions and subject to their whims rather than a right guaranteed to everyone by the government. 
not all of us are ready to just give up so easily. I’m willing to fight for the nice things we have, even if you’re not.
I’m referring to meaningful fighting for our collective rights, not fighting amongst ourselves— such as with petty contrarianism.
no thanks
Publicly funded doesn't mean government controlled, PBS and NPR only get about 10% of their budgets from the government. Most of it comes from Viewers like You! (Donations)
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
39% corporate and 31% fees, compared to 12% from contributions. I think federal funding grants fall under the 8% "other" in that breakdown.