Make people pay for journalism

The fact is that news outlets which are free for all to access fail to attract sufficient funds from voluntary payments from individual users. Faced with more pressing needs, most people understandably decline to donate as freely as they take. Only when there is a paywall will some, and then not many, provide the funding which is needed.

In some countries, state-backed institutions (such as in the UK the BBC) obtain funding from mandatory payments, which are widely resented. Other mass media are subsidised by intrusive advertising and, as often as not, by powerful corporations who exercise control over what is published. That is, they are subject to indirect censorship. The situation is no better when it is the state which pays for publicity. Before the advent of the internet, pressure by advertisers was more disparate and therefore avoidable.

It is against this background that I advocate a mandatory amount to be paid by all citizens in return for some journalism being free to access by all-comers.

Radical change cannot happen overnight. Let a state-sanctioned institution be the default recipient. The innovation presented here is that people should be allowed to pay the amount to a news outlet of their choice. There would need to be definitions of what counted as a mass media outlet and ways of auditing the payments without people’s preferences becoming known. This solution would uphold the market principle of people voting with their money.

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