that's a decent and succinct summary of the situation, and perhaps why the hybrid funding model of subscriptions, ads, and classifieds balanced out to objective-ish news for the few decades before the internet flattened out the business model entirely.
the news industry is roughly $100B in the US (depending on how you define it). as a thought experiment, maybe we could give each of our 330M residents $300/year (~10% of the military budget) to spend on any news source, and only news sources, and preclude other forms of revenue for the industry. that'd make journalism directly accountable to the entirety of the population rather than just to moneyed interests.
the news industry is roughly $100B in the US (depending on how you define it). as a thought experiment, maybe we could give each of our 330M residents $300/year (~10% of the military budget) to spend on any news source, and only news sources, and preclude other forms of revenue for the industry. that'd make journalism directly accountable to the entirety of the population rather than just to moneyed interests.