Legal and Financial Structures to Support Public Interest Journalism

What do you know about legal issues relating to journalism, of any sort?

What do you know about financial issues relating to journalism, particularly quality journalism?

Perhaps you would prefer to pay for public interest satire rather than public interest journalism.

Yet quality satire, in the public interest, depends upon quality knowledge acquired through quality journalism.

That is especially the case when a satirist acquires relevant knowledge first-hand, through the practice of public interest journalism.

Where, if anywhere, are appropriate legal and financial structures available to public interest journalists, including public interest citizen journalists and public interest satirists?

You may expect public interest journalism to be funded by the public, or by advertising or by governments or by philanthropists, or by a combination of those sources of revenue.

But should public interest journalism be freely accessible to the public, without charge, or should it mainly be available by subscription or through another form of patronage?

Perhaps you provide a pro bono service to not-for-profit providers of public interest journalism.

If so, what have you been learning through that experience?

While avoiding biases and/or acquiring a responsible approach to funding may be in the public interest from your point of view, what have you discovered in practice?

How do you know when a public interest satire service is even more necessary than a public interest news service?

If you work as a legal practitioner and/or accountancy professional, how have your workplace experiences influenced your answers to the above questions? 

Regardless of your current occupation, if you have been genuinely addressing the most important issues in the public interest, you will have been giving priority to identifying and implementing legal and financial structures to support public interest journalism.  

If you regard yourself as having a well-informed approach to journalistic patronage, what do you know about legal and financial structures to support public interest journalism, and how did you acquire that information?

Developing and implementing appropriate legal and financial structures often forms the essential basis of good planning, along with good ethics, of course.

What does investing in good faith mean to you in terms of legal and financial structures?

How should public interest journalism be funded, and by whom?

How do you define public interest journalism, and why?

Who are the journalists in your local area involved in performing local interest journalism of consistent quality, in the public interest, and how are those persons rewarded for the service they supply? 

What are the threats those persons encounter, and from whom?

Public interest journalists require adequate legal protection, as do whistleblowers. 

Excessive expenses are likely to be associated with urgent legal advice and urgent financial advice, like urgent dental treatment and urgent responses to other emergencies.

Do you know where to locate appropriate advice when you most need it?

What is public interest critiquing and how does it relate to public interest journalism?

And should public interest critiquing and public interest journalism be funded in the same way?

How should public interest satire be funded? 

Perhaps you regard public interest journalism, and public interest satire, in much the same way as dentistry, particularly if you are being held accountable through public interest practices.

The legal and financial structures to support public interest journalism must allow accurate interpretations of events to be permitted and protected and promoted.

You may assess the relevance of journalism in terms of nationality, citizenship and legal status, or in relation to geography and/or history.

How is your philanthropy expressed if not through sharing important knowledge in the public interest? 

You may regard enlightened patronage as the most ethical way to fund public interest journalism.