A free press is important to democracy, so the government should move some tax money to journalists, and then this link could instead be to a taxpayer funded site (like NPR) instead of to a for-profit ad-powered spam-site run by billionaires who pay journalists as little as possible while pocketing as much as they can.
Unfortunately, PBS and NPR are so severely under-funded that they need to run donation drives and can't do journalism of this level.
The idea is that social media companies offer summaries of news that replace reading the article for most people. Thanks to commenters bypassing paywalls they can get the full article too!
News companies cannot effectively negotiate with large social media companies for a slice of ad revenue due to discrepancies in size.
The government proposed a compulsory licensing scheme where websites with an "asymmetric bargaining position" (i.e Big Tech) that link to news must pay.
Google is paying $100 million,[1] Meta walked away from the negotiating table.
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-bill-c18-on...
This isn’t new. The government has been trying to cut funding for PBS since the 60s.
Why would anyone want the government to fund the press? How would you actually expect it to cover government corruption?
Commercial broadcasters tend to lean towards entertainment (needs ad revenue), so news becomes entertainment too.
It works as long as the state and public believes in democracy, accountability, etc. It’s very vulnerable, but everything in democracy is. Democracy and free press can only work if the population also defends it, which is what is failing in the US. The majority of population does not want to defend democracy.
But I think the hard on for PBS that conservatives have is that PBS admitted gay people exist.
Back in the 60s PBS was controversial partially because it showed black and white kids playing together on Sesane Street…
Press that does not need to be profitable is extremely valuable to a democracy as it can openly talk about any issues without a conflict of interest.
Good democracies have that funding and no meddling of politicians with the content enshrined in their constitution.
Even until the 80s it was legal to arrest a homosexual couple for having sex in their own home based on “sodomy” laws.
Today women are dying because doctors are afraid of performing medical necessary abortions to save their lives because they might go to jail
They have been trying to get rid of funding since at least 1969 when Mr. Rogers himself went before Congress to try to keep it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA
It amazes me that anyone who knows anything about this country actually wants to give it more control of the media or any increased power .
If government actually funded news in the public interest, it would mean that Democrats were in charge. Sure, Republicans could always cut funding or pressure publicly funded news if they returned to power. It would be our job to make sure that didn't happen. Publicly funded media can't work under corrupt Republican administration.
But, it's also true that commercial media is being bent under pressure from the Trump administration. Republicans will try to break anything which they perceive as limiting their power. Your narrow focus on publicly funded media seems to miss that big picture.