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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

> News should be free

How do you propose news be funded?

Publicly, for instance.

I think this is bad faith because it’s clear OP means it should be free at point of use. I doubt they’re arguing the people who create it shouldn’t be compensated. There are many ways to do this.

Why would the government fund news criticizing it, unless you had a different definition of publicly in mind?

propublica.org

The "about us"[0] page is a bit hidden but explains well the concept.

- [0]: https://www.propublica.org/about/

How do you think courts or parliaments are funded? The same argument applies here. Why should the fourth power be any different than the second or third?

I’m not making an argument, I’m asking why would the government do this, now especially.

Why not maintain the status quo?

Fair point, but consider that the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government is enforced by the constitution. Without a constitutional amendment, a fourth "public information" branch would have no such protection.

Furthermore, consider that these days even the courts (which are supposed to be politically neutral) have become highly politicized. I can't think of any reason why a supposedly neutral fourth branch of government would be any better in that regard.

I do not know for sure about the US constitution, but my constitution already has freedom of press in it. I guess the press would have to distribute the money by themselves, the government would just hand it over.

Exactly. If the King paid for the newspaper, he would de-fund them if they reported news that went against the King. The fourth estate must remain independent.

The same exact statement is true for private ownership. The difference is that with public funding you can legislate to prevent governments to interfere with the news outlets. When they are privately owned on the other hand, you have no control over it.

The government funds a Supreme Court that rules to overturn its own legislation, often criticizing it in the process.

Why would private investors fund news criticizing them?

As long as you have many different news outlets owned by different investors this should be ok?

Except wealthy people still own the vast majority, so news will generally favor the wealthy.

The problem is that the interests of the private investors converge. The best we can hope from them is to fight each other, but they won't ever attack the system that keeps them all rich.

The public should not care why its government might not like to fund news criticizing it. Just governments tolerate and respond to criticism.

The US is currently dismantling their Post Office, which is required to be funded by their Constitution. In Canada, we have publicly funded news (the CBC) but one of the major political parties runs on a platform of destroying it every election.

> The US is currently dismantling their Post Office

Where did you read this? The US postal system is not being dismantled, it’s meant to be self funded and it cannot meet its financial obligations.

> required to be funded by their Constitution.

It only empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads." That’s the entire Post Office clause.

> it’s meant to be self funded and it cannot meet its financial obligations

Since when are public services required to be self funded? Are the army, police or DMV self funded? And don't their obligations included obviously biased ( in favour of painting the post office as a financially ruinous institution and privatise/dismantle it) provisions for full pensions of future employees, which nobody else does, anywhere?

It’s that way because Congress makes it that way. That’s how they decided to run it and they are the only people able to change it.

I know of no requirement in the US Constitution that the US government fund the US Post Office.

The US Constitution grants Congress the authority to do so if it chooses to, and historically it has chosen to. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads."

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause

I do think that the US government should ensure that you should ensure that the mail continues. I just wanted to clarify that government isn't obligated to pay for it.

I think it is good faith because it points out the unintended consequences of the action that OP advocates: quality journalism goes underfunded and the cohesion of society suffers —- unless there is also a proposal for how to differently fund journalism.

So like BBC or Pravda? I don't trust publicly funded organisations with important things like news not to be corrupted and start serving only certain political agenda.

So you'd rather trust Rupert Murdoch to make your interest? Because it is 100% guaranteed that his news outlets are going to serve only his political agenda.

More to this point: you have some form of redress against the government. None against Murdoch unless you are very rich.

If this isn’t obvious then you don’t know much about the BBC. If anything, I’d argue they spend too much time hand-wringing about listener / viewer complaints.

By estimating the damage done to society by under-reporting, schedule half of said damage from tax-money into a fund, and make user reading a similar themed news-page, allocate a small percentage of said fund to the newspaper. The fewer articles a user reads, the more valuable a single "read" becomes.

The system is gambled with tons of faked users. A Issue on which the journalists are reporting. It becomes economic unfeasible to do anything else then click bait journalism..

Donor funded news exists.

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