A number of news outlets have been given the government-funded media label now on Twitter. Some supporters of the move say this is a good thing and now there should be a movement to defund those organizations by force, let them voluntarily raise the funds that they need. Would they be able to stay afloat?
They say they are 'publicly funded' but if the public were given a chance to vote on whether or not they want to fund those outlets, would the support be so high? Maybe there might be many who would like to see them defunded given the content that they promote and push out. Of course there would be many supporters who would be happy to fund, a variety of outlets have subscribers online and millions of people have had experience with subscribing to one newspaper or another in their lives. Would they be able to survive without being subsidized? Should they be subsidized and if they are might that impact how they report on issues?
News is important to keep communities informed and these are important questions to consider when some of the biggest voices are getting a great deal of funding from governments today. Is state-affiliated media really truly 100% unbiased? Is that up to them to determine? Or are the consumers the ones to decide?
In recent years surveys have shown that people increasingly are distrusting of media today in the market, why might that be? Thankfully there are many sources online for people to turn to today to try and find information, even if there might be a sea of misinformation to sift through in order to find the truth. Is this helping people to become more critical in determining what they are going to believe? Should they have that freedom to decide for themselves or should it be a top-down opinion fed to them that they are forced to accept? While many might not trust mainstream news sources there is also a lot of skeptical opinions about news shared on social media too.
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