[fcantournet]

Historically news outlet run as public service (with sufficient guardrails for autonomy) such as the BBC, PBS, France Television, Arte (naming only those I know well) have produce much better news coverage than the privately owned ones.

OTOH the concept of independent public institution and general checks and balances seems to have been entirely forgotten, so maybe that's not a solution for 21st century.

An alternative would be communally owned media (50/50 by readership and journalists), with simple direct tax incentive to fund them (equal amounts of $ per person)

[CaptainJack]

Having first hand experience of all of the named public services, I beg to differ heavily. These corporations tend to be heavily left-leaning, with no real guardrails preventing this. The consequence is pretty biased coverage, under the guise of a "trust-us, we are here for the greater good".

Look at the handling of Middle-East by BBC, the Zucman tax at France Television, or the current allegations of fraud in some communities in the US.

My current take is that it is really hard to get a fair unbiased coverage, unless you actually state that you will strive to hire and promote both sides. If these corporations had to publish the composition/promotion/pay of their newsroom across the political spectrum (as they do for example by gender), you may start to have fair unbiased coverage. But many journalists working there see it as their job to describe "not the reality as it happens, but rather as it ought to be" (to quote the CEO of France Television). We should acknowledge that people are biased, and measure the balance of biases rather than assert there is no bias because they serve the greater good.

[banannaise]

Public interest stories are left-leaning only in that they tend to oppose the wielders of centralized power, and centralized power is generally a right-leaning construct.

[tehjoker]

This is a very funny take since all of these stations are anti-communist. This is inter-right wing sectarianism.