Comment by gutnor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gutnor | Hacker News Reader

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It could be done with a new separate branch of government. It used to be there was good money to make doing it privately, but nowadays the system needs government funding. Impartial and accessible (also meaning average Joe can understand it) information is as fundamental as the judiciary in order to maintain a working democracy.

There are various element of it in various countries. Like national offices of statistic. There are stuff like the BBC and variety of EU initiative to inform about various processes. Democratic government keep complete record and have public service already make analysis and summary for ministers to work with. So it's not like it is out of the realm of the achievable. Maybe an official rating could be created based on a service like politifact that independant newspaper must display on their frontpage like the food safety rating for restaurants. Teach the kid at school that anything not rated is basically fiction and that will take care of the majority of the population.

There is the risk of it becoming a propaganda arm of the government, sure, but you can have the same argument with every branch of the government. There is no intrinsic reason to trust the judiciary, the military or the police, except a tradition of being trustworthy which is really what maintain the whole system running: a lot of honest people everywhere. In any case, that's a moot point since the journalism it replaces is dying, and we know the new media that is killing it is not even pretending to have any kind of integrity.

It really does bring up though questions though, like when you look at the current administration and what they have done with the White House press office. Imagine if there existed a well-respected and trusted national news outfit that was suddenly being run by Sarah Huckabee Sanders. With the normal United States executive branch spoils system it would be a shitshow. It'd have to be like 4th branch of government or at least run separately like the Fed does.

It shouldn't be part of the Executive but its own branch, as independent as the judiciary

> independent as the judiciary

In theory or in practice, because what we have now (and what many would argue we have always had) is not very independent.

How is it going to work?

The judiciary is nominated by the executive, which I can’t see working well for this. Presidents from both parties would universally opt to staff the branch with journalists that were soft on government and politicians in general.

Same problem if they get appointed by congress.

As for elections, yea what could go wrong there? America is pretty level headed. We would never elect some kind of partisan maniac to an important position like this.

All the branches of government are inherently political.

Well, this is strictly theoretical. I can't imagine our politicians wanting to launch a news service, let alone an unbiased one.

But if they did, one option would be to hire an editorial board from nationally esteemed people from outside the political system. You know, draw the membership from Nobel prize winning scientists and authors, Olympic medal winners, people like that. They would then hire and oversee journalists who knew how to journalism.

If you're worried that would lead to olympic medals becoming politically biased, you could have the committee appoint their own replacements.

"Entirely unbiased" may be impossible, but "relatively less biased than Fox News or The Guardian" sounds achievable.

Basically, we should fund PBS

He said unbiased. No matter the quality of reporting, NPR has a clear bias. As does BBC for that matter, even less obscured.

Basically, we should fund PBS to BBC levels

Senior Judges are appointed by the executive

What if the runner-up party in the election somehow ran it?

That would just change the bias, not remove it

You can never remove it, and this change seems better than allowing propaganda.

That already happened - just turn on CNN.

In Germany we have pseudo-governmental news stations. They work to a degree but you will only get "safe" news with influence from political parties.*

The quality is mostly good, but it isn't sufficient to be really informed.

The services for rating accuracy of news isn't really a solution in my opinion, since they only shift the problem, even if they slow down the news cycle a little bit. They will also be wrong at some point, like any news outlet.

You cannot really have free independant journalism and put heaps of regulations upon them.

> There is the risk of it becoming a propaganda arm of the government

It is inevitable. If there are honest people everywhere, we can keep governmental involvement to a minimum. The real problem is monetization and education. Even renowned outlets use clickbait in this day and age.

I also do think that a lot of "new media" will vanish again.

edit: They also tend to develop into expensive behemoths which quickly develop their own interests.

* which includes classical censorship.

Largely the same with the BBC in the UK.

Lots of people scream they are pro-left/pro-right (often without evidence) but I think if you look at their history what they are is pro-whoever is in power.

They know who writes the cheques.

True, I do think they make a real effort to stay neutral, but they are always very tame and if in doubt, they side with the government. Merkel just plainly removed certain reports, not sure about the topic. That was what I meant with classical censorship.

> Merkel just plainly removed certain reports, not sure about the topic.

Removing all political influence is hard. I also am certain there was a case of some politician calling an editor, but don't remember the details beyond the politician getting booted because of it. But that sounds like bullshit or at least highly exaggerated. I'd like a source on that.

They used to be ok at holding the government in power to account before the Hutton Inquiry. Now they're slavishly obedient.

Worse than their bias, though, was the defunding for investigative reporting. These days the front page is covered with lazy reporting, clickbait and reprinted press releases.

I don't think that's true at all. The BBC has run lots of major stories embarrassing to the government such as the failed role out of Universal Credit and the Windrush scandal.

Right now there's this story on the front page - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-47884273 - which appears to be original investigative reporting into a Tory MP.

What are you basing your opinion on?

The BBC aren't funded by the government though - "who writes the cheques" is members of the public who pay the license fee.

Yeah but ultimately it's the government who enable license fee collection as it currently stands with their blokes in a van who come around to harrass you if you've not coughed up. There's a special legal framework around TV licensing which more or less ensures the BBC's success - taking that away and forcing them to operate like a normal private company would inevitably massively harm their revenue and force them into finding external private investors, advertisers within the UK and such. So I think it's fair to say that the BBC's operations certainly are dependent on government good-will even if they don't officially control it.

I think there is some value in having a network like this, however, in that it adds to the diversity of networks in that it's not just "yet another privately owned network".

I find it interesting, however, that Channel 4 is state owned yet they (maybe I just mean Jon Snow in particular) seem to have an easier time being more critical of the government. It is likely that this is because it's not totally dependent on any one form of revenue given that it also has adverts on its main channels, but also it probably sees less pressure because of its smaller viewership and I suppose generally less serious tone of programmes.

A formalised fourth estate?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

You can't have the government report on the government and expect full independence - even if it is independent of the executive, you still need to fund it somehow, which is going to make it beholden to someone.

Both the BBC and CBC have a history of government influence in their reporting - this is not a civil society function I can trust to government.

> Both the BBC and CBC have a history of government influence in their reporting

Citation absolutely required. The BBC have always sought to be impartial - which brings its own, occasionally absurd, biases. Their charter has always required they separate from government and impartial.

They've managed to piss off almost every government, of every colour, in almost equal measure.

They have a wonderful knack of appearing biased to Labour or Conservative, depending on whether you're Conservative or Labour supporter.

>You can't have the government report on the government and expect full independence - even if it is independent of the executive, you still need to fund it somehow, which is going to make it beholden to someone.

And private media, controlled by unaccountable billionaire capitalists and funded by corporate advertising, can be trusted?

With publicly funded media, there can be far more scrutiny, openness and criticism. I mean, look at the UK and compare the BBC, which has its flaws, to the absolutely repulsive, dishonest and dogmatically right-wing private press.

At least the private media would compete between themselves.

Citation needed here. In many countries it does not happen at all. It only works if you have enough billionaires with very different interests to compete against each other. And it does not mean they will compete about everything either.

> Both the BBC and CBC have a history of government influence in their reporting

Do you have a link for this? The govt can’t tamper with the editorial output of the BBC, that’s not how it works.

This is false. Check out the D-Notice system (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-Notice) and note there are very recent examples of government interference, notably during Snowden's leaks and the Skripal affair.

That hardly makes them government controlled.

First D notices apply to all media, second they are a voluntary "government request" to not publish. Various outlets, including the BBC, have plenty of history ignoring these. Some are actioned. Essentially the media body has to be convinced there is a national security case to follow the request. They're not mandatory and not following one results in no government or court action. Just words.

Cameron emptily threatened to bring in tougher measures to restrict all media, not just the BBC, during Snowden.

> It could be done with a new separate branch of government.

Ah, yes. Maybe we could call it The Ministry of Thought.

I think PBS has a nicer ring to it myself.

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