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This article says government subsidy for local news is always a bad idea. Do you agree? (whatworks.news)

submitted 3 months ago by borebore to c/boston

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I wonder if corporate funding is the only way to get professional news or not.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think this is a little doom and gloom for what is a very well intentioned project with an independent oversight board. Is the theory here that a paper receiving this funding would hesitate to expose corruption or be critical of local projects? To be honest, it's just not enough money. $100,000 a year being split among several local news orgs is a nice donation that pays part of someone's salary.

I wonder if corporate funding is the only way to get professional news or not.

That's definitely not what the author is implying. Direct corporate funding has all the same potential problems but with less oversight, more money, and with way more things to hide.

[–] borebore 2 points 3 months ago

Thank you, I felt the premise of the article was too black and white. I think independent journalism is critical to a functioning society as is government. Therefore, government needs to encourage independent journalism somehow. It's easy to find examples of state sponsored media that is obviously propaganda, but there has to be an middle ground. If public funded journalism was the ideal balancer, for example, maybe government could have a system of helping news outlets setup public funding infrastructure? I just hate the idea of saying "government bad".