With digital TV and Radio (and of course, net-based entertainment) there could be added, a rating functionality. The audience could casually participate in providing democratic feedback of anything that is being broadcast. It would be great if the ratings were not just a simple up or down vote but could also be in the form of a 1-5 or 1-10 rating – or be in the form of emotion (joy, disgust, sadness, etc.) and concept (“I feel informed”, “This is important”, “This is disappointing”, etc.) buttons. Along with this ability to give pertinent but simple feedback, the results could be made transparent as well. There could be a view mode that would show current feedback statistics for the broadcast.
That would handle one aspect of opinions of how valued a broadcast may be to the public.. the other side is where the funding for these programs comes from. You could either go the capitalist or the socialist way.. or both.
In the capitalist method, everything would be pay per view. The price would probably have to be low or not many people would watch. Life with that would most likely be similar to using cell phones without “plans”.
In the socialist method, taxes would pay for the programming and voters would control what shows or stories (or general styles/genres/subjects) actually get the funding.
In either method, advertising could be excluded entirely to remove that source of bias and influence. The programs might not be as well funded.. but I think in most cases, current programs are over-paid and the broadcasting industries are rife with wasteful excess.
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As for how to prevent propaganda.. the best way is probably through diversity of viewpoints broadcast. And the best way to increase the diversity of viewpoints is to reduce the cost and difficulty of creating contents and broadcasting them as much as possible.
If it’s cheap enough and easy enough for someone to argue with what you say, they’ll do it.
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You probably shouldn’t use the word “filter” in this context because in the larger picture it amounts to censorship and informational fascism.
What could be implemented for net-info though, are protocols for increasing the ability to quickly/easily verify information and for certifying credentials or building cumulative “street cred” for a given source.
I can think of a couple ways of doing this – and I think these sort of systems would give the greatest benefit without needing to form armies of corruptible moderators or attempting to develop impossibly smart artificial intelligence programs.