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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Great post.

This is something that I have wondered about for a long time, especially with the impending collapse of the old newspapers. The talk of "new media" and the internet as this "great equalizer" has left me wondering about the future of investigative journalism, a field which, it seems to me, has been dormant for a long time, even before the cutbacks outlined above.

The cost of "access," in particular, makes me question whether independent blogger-journalists/twitter-ers can fill such an important need.

Some comments have noted the problem with gov't-funded media--namely, that it would make journalists less likely to investigate government. If we accept that claim--that media outlets are reluctant to investigate their backers/funders--then the status quo, with advertisers funding news organizations, is equally unacceptable.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Agreed. So what's the low-cost, low-discretion, difficult-to-game method of allocating funds? I assume one component would be a series of tests which can be performed by someone reading the work (doubtless there would be automatic computer-driven ones too; at the very least, a plagiarism index of some kind). One I'd vote for is a distinction between journalism, which requires commentary, and press, which only requires publishing.

The low-discretion part of the idea is probably the most important one: of course, if the subsidy was allocated in proportion to how well the journalist had defended the government's position, then I would be as saddened as anyone. However, if the metrics and/or standards for the funding were precise and difficult to alter, and the allocation was public, then that kind of favoritism would be extremely difficult to effect.

It's true that this would undermine journalistic independence from government in exchange for potentially increasing journalistic independence from corporations (the current paymasters). Pro-paycheck-giver bias will inevitably calm some potential anti-government sentiment, and what's more, breed entitlement in this new generation of journalists. But hopefully a Journalists' Lobby would prove less destructive than the, say, the Pharmaceutical Lobby.

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