1y ago

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

Why a direct government subsidy for local news in Cambridge is a bad idea

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

3 comments

I'd rather government subsidized over corporate owned. While both aren't ideal, corporate owned will never act in the best interest of the people,.only the shareholders. Government isn't great but at least there is some semblance of accountability with elections
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.
- 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".