An unusual post on Techcrunch, one of the top blogs covering web 2.0 start ups, is generating a lot of comments on the other side of the Ocean.

Michael Arrington, the influential author of the blog, asks "If Real Journalism Fails As A Business, Should Government Step In?"... Reading the post and the numerous comments gives us Europeans another view on the American media ecosystem.

While here in Europe we are used to government funded media - think the excellent BBC or our own Belgian VRT/RTBF -, in the US the idea is not really as obvious as it is here. The topic has even been discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Arrington's take on the topic is clear:

The idea is both dangerous and absurd.... Freedom of the press is one of the most important checks on government. If they’re paying the bills, the press is no longer independent.

I completely agree in principle - but then the day to day reality is totally different, here as well as in the US. As to my personal feeling, I still think public service media (in general) offer better quality than private but that there is a real future for Citizen Media, owned by no one except the public.