Yeah, I think publicly funded news is an important model to consider because in many ways it seems like the only good way to do it… but obviously people have concerns about conflicts of interest, which is fair, but you’re going to have them no matter what, so maybe we need a mix of differently funded news sources… or maybe we just need other systems in place that decrease the conflict of interest and make it unlikely for the public funding to be manipulated in order to control the news or whatever. This is one reason that some system of universal basic income seems like an appealing solution to me. If everybody is just guaranteed a livable wage, then it’s not really a source of income that could be altered just to manipulate journalists (ideally anyway). Though, obviously there’s potentially problems with that too, and journalists may have additional expenses which would not be covered, so it could limit what they can actually do.