A quasi-government news organization, say like the BBC or Al-Jazeera, would fail under the influence of big money in the U.S.A. just as our private news media has failed. National Public Radio and Television are hardly worth spit any more as independent news sources, they've become Fox News for people who think they are too smart for Fox News.
Papers like the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the decrepit old queen of newspapers the New York Times, and all the other big city newspapers and major television news networks (CBS especially of the moment) are corrupt shadows of their former selves.
All these serious news sources had numerous blind spots in the past, issues they wouldn't cover and issues they sugar-coated, but mostly they maintained some journalistic standards. That's gone. It seems these days they are all faces of the Great Corporate Borg, little better than TASS of the Soviet Union. An informed reader must ignore the chaff and read between the lines. A story about the recent upsurge in natural gas production means only that we will be drinking polluted water long after the natural gas bubble collapses and heating or cooling our homes becomes a great burden again.
Simple things like smart phone tweets, photo sharing sites, and discussion boards like this one have remarkable power. But how long before they fall under authoritarian rule and disruption, either corporate control (U.S.A style) or central government control (Chinese style)???