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by vslira·3mo ago·view on hn ↗
I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts:

Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in.

Maybe a liberal, democratic state could successfully build something similar for news organizations: all citizens have to pay a "journalism tax", which they then channel to a subscription for a vehicle they trust.

Yes, a million ways this can be abused, the government may censor opposition, etc. I know, I said the idea wasn't great. But worth pondering. Also, this is based on a very stylized understanding of how said German tax works (I'm not German and never looked at it that deeply)

btw I understand this is the opposite of "free", but more about journalism financing in general.

5 comments
Germany already has something like that, it's the Rundfunkbeitrag: a mandatory monthly fee of €18.36 per household, intended to fund public broadcasting (ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio).

The BBC is funded in a similar fashion, and is very competitive alongside commercial news media. Other countries fund it from regular tax revenues.

A good public news service that is actually widely watched and legitimately valuable is possible. It's never perfectly independent, but many countries have done it successfully to a reasonable degree.

But yes, you were saying that it could instead be funnelled onto an organisation of each tax-payer's choosing instead of being centralised. It's an interesting idea.

You essentially just force everyone to have a news subscription, whichever they want. I suppose you would need an approved list, which always carries some bias.

I think health-insurance works similarly in the Netherlands. Healthcare is private, but everyone is pretty much forced to have insurance and they are tightly regulated. In practice it's very similar to other countries that have public healthcare, but you can choose your provider.

The BBC is state funded media, largely supplying state propaganda, paid for with a tax.

The only quirk is that you can avoid the tax by not owning a TV and that it sometimes used to hold the government to account in the days before David Kelly was murdered.

While I do disgree with the "state funded media scope" - I'd go as far as saying the BBC has become so fearful to rock the boat in any way that it is at risk of becoming a redundant source - I do think the lack of "competition" for BBC funding leads to a worse journalistic rigour. It's not the centre of excellence for journlism it once was, and is often looked down on when compared to other paid news outlets like the Economist, Atlantic, the FT, et ceterea. Adding an element of competition into the equation could make for better journalism, but equally, that would likely require more funding in the end.
Several European countries have something like it. I can only find a very brief article in English on Wikipedia and a longer one in Swedish. But it seems to be reasonably successful in my experience. The Swedish article mentions: Sweden, other Nordic countries, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d

The issue is that this is on a balance sheet of a budget somewhere and an autocrat will selectively choose to cut with a knife such they speak ill of them. See the current debate with the FCC in the USA.

I am sure there is some kind of financial instrument that could be structured in a way to pay down a news org with public money that cannot just be slashed at whim and will.

So, you don't think any government program at all will work in this case?
When I lived there (late 90s) you weren't obligated to pay that tax if you declared that you were an atheist.