• AA5B@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Maybe the Brits have something with the television tax. I have no idea how you apply it to the modern streaming world, but it’s an interesting alternative

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          You don’t even need license fees. NPR and PBS do terrific journalism and they frequently even make reports that make their corporate sponsors look bad while admitting that they are a corporate sponsor. They get a combination of corporate sponsorship funds, government grants and membership drives. And it works really well.

          It’s too bad more people don’t realize that or they would become members of their local public radio/TV station and it would get even better.

      • DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz
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        5 months ago

        Chasing the profit incentive, including and especially for journals, is an overwhelmingly large part of the reason murica is in this mess to begin with.

        What about my bills, then? I couldn’t pay internet this month. Am I just supposed to be ignorant because I’m poor?

          • Confused_Emus@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            And underfunded and steadily becoming fewer in number. Information should be free regardless of its source.

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              5 months ago

              I recently read that there are more libraries than fats food restaurants (in the US), so seems like libraries are doing just fine.

              Information, like everything, costs money. If you don’t pay for journalism, someone will and they will control the information. That or garbage LLM generated sites riddled with malware.

              Journalists are workers and deserve a living wage.

                  • DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz
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                    5 months ago

                    Assuming that libraries work flawlessly and are actually as available as your broken (and unupdated at time of writing) link suggests they are to everyone and that everyone’s access is equivalent, disregarding the fact that libraries are only free at the time of purchase and actually are paid for by the taxes eating my check, forgetting for the moment that libraries are free so what’s wrong with my accessing this for free, ignoring the broken governmental system doing its goddamndest to shut down libraries across the country for the little good they actually do-

                    Libraries are everything I said and much much more, but I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know the big city library (not incidentally, I’m not supposed to have access to the big city library online catalogue anymore since I don’t live there) has access to a couple of databases that allow access to an… eclectic collection of such well-known and respectable news journals as the Agence France-Presse, the South China Morning Post, and who could forget the Las Vegas Review-Journal. What about the local library, I hear you choosing not to ask? Why, no, it doesn’t have access to such databases. I checked.

                    It’s news. It’s free. You get what you pay for at the library I and my three library cards find.