Of course, we would have to put serious limiters on government input on the sites to make sure that we keep free speech. I don’t even mean that in the sense of “I want to say hateful things!” but in the sense that I don’t want heavy restrictions on the news that I see, especially not by any one political group. (Looking at you, elections time).

You could set up a crown corporation similar to the CBC where it's given a mandate to do the things you want but has some amount of separation from government control, outside of funding.