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about Voter-Funded Media for Democracies: |
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Why would voter-supported news media be any different from the news media we have now? |
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Voting is a community service. Information to help people vote better is a public good. So it is not surprising that commercial markets do not supply enough of this public good, especially in terms of its quality. Commercial markets supply goods with personal benefits that people will pay for individually. Many experts and other citizens agree that we need to improve our public-interest media -- see for example www.freepress.net . The usual way to pay for public goods is with public funds. Normally public funds are controlled by politicians, but for political information that would be a conflict of interest, so voters should control that funding directly. The incentives that determine which media you pay for individually are different from the incentives for voting public funds. It makes sense to pay for your own entertainment, but when you are influencing the media going to all citizens, it is not in your interest to vote for entertainment for everyone, since 99.99% of that wouldn’t benefit you. However, information that helps everyone vote more intelligently does benefit you. It is a public good that lacks the private benefit of entertainment. It is rational to be unwilling to pay as an individual for a public good, but to be willing to vote for everyone to pay for it. So the same citizens who buy People magazine at the checkout stand will vote public funds for serious investigative reporting.
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Wouldn’t some media award contestants be biased, corrupted by bribery or other influence? |
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Yes, there are likely to be such biases, just as there are in our current news media. But voter funding will add a new incentive for media to build reputations for serving the public interest, so we can expect them to produce better information.
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How do we know whether voter-funded media will actually be beneficial? |
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No one knows for sure. There has only been a few trials so far; see an assessment in this blog post. The arguments in my paper "Voter-Funded Media" are plausible, but the only way to find out is to try it. That paper also reviews similar proposals made by prominent law and political science researchers in the USA and Germany. If it helps to consider my professional credibility and judgment, you can review my résumé. If voter funding for media is beneficial, we can apply it throughout democratic politics as well as for shareowner voting in corporations. So the potential benefits are huge compared to the cost of trying it out.
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For FAQ about Corporations, please see www.corpmon.com/faq.htm |
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