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Comment by lnxg33k1 | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, in Italy this issue was solved during ww-2 time, a bunch of commercial newspapers from far-left to right (we couldn't have far-right back then, of course :D, we still can't but people has forgot and so we have now, but they can't really read and write), created a cooperative called ANSA (https://www.ansa.it), that is no opionion, no controlling point of view, just facts as they happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenzia_Nazionale_Stampa_Assoc...)

If you force Fox, CNBC, CNN to create an agency of news reporting where each one oversee the content created, in order to be as objective as possible, then I think the society in US would benefit

In Italy those newspapers do money by selling copies containing the premium content, which is like reports, opinion articles, more in depth opinion articles etc, which people is still interested in, but for news and facts then ANSA is the source of truth

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We do have the Associated Press (AP), which seems similar to what you describe. That said, even such sources can be guilty of ideological bias if they choose to report certain facts and not others. In practice, I think AP is pretty even-handed, but I think that is as much a result of their editorial process as it is of their focus on factual reporting over opinion/analysis.

Ah yeah I forgot that AP is American, it's my go-to place for non-italian news, yeah ok nevermind my reply then.. interesting the point you make about their bias, not being there and following the scenarios in person I can only read it from across the ocean so I didn't know that...

But Berlusconi's (finivest/mediaset) ownership of Il Giornale and 3 of 7 TV channels makes that all a little less relevant due to political manipulation, doesn't it?

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

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/016344370936116...

Yes and no, I would divide the news consumer between TV and written/paper/internet, Berlusconi is an issue because he controls a big chunk of TV easily accessible news content, but I am not sure how would you solve that, if a person wants to go to see news that match its point of view, then you can't force him not to, and if a TV has a lot of reality shows and entertainment and it mixes all of that with "news" program, then yeah he can kind of decide the weather, but yeah if you want un-opinionated news source you can at least have that, for what it's worth

But the scope of my reply was about "who owns the truth?" and yeah you need a place where people can go and check facts that are checked by peers of other point of view

I would tell you about my literature professor, he would walk around with multiple newspapers under his armpit and suggest that "If you want to try to get the truth you need to get the same fact from multiple point of view and try to get it in the middle"

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