191–200 of 303 posts
If you look at the history of the Public Broadcasting Act [1] that established the CPB and eventually PBS, it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV. Its authors wanted to make it easier for smaller, non-commercial entities to produce and distribute high-quality educational content. In that regard, the Intern…
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Do you have a more effective system in mind?
Nobody's ever come up with one, other than the free market. That's why the Constitution does not allow the government to limit free speech. I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the belief that it's the profit motive that leads to corruption. Even a casual review of history will amply show that government funded news is not independent journalism nor unbiased journalism.
*Not that the CPB is actually owned by the public, but the principle is closely related.
If you look at the history of the Public Broadcasting Act [1] that established the CPB and eventually PBS, it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV. Its authors wanted to make it easier for smaller, non-commercial entities to produce and distribute high-quality educational content. In that regard, the Intern…
I think that's debatable. As much as journalism has been democratized it's also nose-dived in quality. And I don't mean the MSM. The overwhelming majority of "citizen journalists" are producing very low quality or even downright detrimental work. At the same time, a lot of professional journalism has sacrificed quality for revenue. Public media like PBS and NPR affiliates are intended to promote professional journali…
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What actually qualifies as misinformation? I see lots of things these days that fall under that label that would simply have been called gossip in the past and covered from the perspective of exploring popular gossip.
Examples of Misinformation: scientifically debunked ideas like the idea vaccines cause autism Ideas with zero basis in reality like the idea that most or all mass shootings are actually faked using "crisis actors" Political conspiracy theories like the idea that Bernie Sanders would have been the democratic candidate for president, but was cheated by Hillary Clinton. Misrepresented ideas, like how certain people on t…
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I think your point is valid, but I would like to point our that PBS has a lot of great stuff on Youtube. I think there is a role for public broadcasting, but it will probably be marginal. > who gets to decide what is disinformation/misinformation? I certainly hope it isn't the authors of this paper, the German Marshall Fund. The GMF funds their own propaganda like the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and they are fun…
FYI that article reads as very crank-y. Not saying they are wrong, but it's impenetrable reading to an uninformed neutral party. Too much emotional accusations and a huge cast of characters, but no clear explanation of what they are claiming. But anyway, accusing an organization of having a pro-USA bias isn't a strong criticism against a domestic USA project.
The founder of the site, Robert Parry, uncovered US involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking during the 80s. Nobody denied the facts, but by the time the story came out American political culture had become more conservative (Reaganism) and people weren't as interested in hearing about covert crimes the way they were in the 70s (Watergate).
Parry got drummed out of the journalism for not towing the line and became somewhat bitter. It's not my only source of news, but it can be refreshing to read something that quickly attempts to poke holes in mainstream narratives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Parry_(journalist)
> But anyway, accusing an organization of having a pro-USA bias isn't a strong criticism against a domestic USA project.
There are laws against domestic propaganda. For instance, the CIA is not allowed to plant stories in US media.
The German Marshall fund is part of USAID and USAID was founded by the members of the CIA. They're sister organizations that service the same political goals. It should raise eyebrows that USAID wants to construct a domestic propaganda operation.
If you look at the history of the Public Broadcasting Act [1] that established the CPB and eventually PBS, it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV. Its authors wanted to make it easier for smaller, non-commercial entities to produce and distribute high-quality educational content. In that regard, the Intern…
"The bill would, for example, give a tax credit to people who donate to nonprofit newsrooms" I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of these nonprofit newsrooms will end up being party-aligned so this will effectively be giving tax credits for political donations.
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Large content platforms don't curate content, and so incentives are misaligned. I believe "curated content without click-baity incentives" is the kind of thing a "PBS" tries to solve. E.g.: an educational video will be followed by flat-earth conspiracy video if the YouTube algorithm choses so. This sabotages content producers with – in this case – educational intentions, as the platform will make producers compete fo…
The corollary to not empowering anyone to push content is disempowering some from pushing content. That is incredibly bad because gives some the power to limit the voices of others. History shows that this power is abused and that the abuse of this power is worse than disinformation. If you look at what is happening today, this call for censorship in the name of combating disinformation has actually had no effect on…
You say that, but ISIS propaganda has been soundly defeated outside of fringe sites like GETTR. And sure, GETTR remains a hotbed of terrible disinformation (such as this ISIS propaganda), but without a mainstream audience, its much less of an issue compared to giving it out to everyone on Twitter.
You can't post an ISIS sponsored beheading video on a mainstream site (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter) without the moderators noticing and censoring it in short order.
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It would be equally as foolish to say the logical conclusion of liberalism is Stalinism. The underlying fallacy is the idea that politics has any conclusions at all.
> The underlying fallacy is the idea that politics has any conclusions at all. I'd say that there are certain flavors of political thought that have an unfolding utopia built into them. With enough of XXXism, an optimal state is reached. It's an exercise for the reader to determine which sorts of philosophy of human organization have that notion built-in.
Let me therefore try to clear up that ambiguity by offering a solution to your exercise: The most dangerous political philosophy is ethno-nationalism.
Until we figure out how to actually enshrine political diversity, this will end up staffed entirely by people of a certain politics, and will become despised by many on the other side.
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A profit motive is not necessarily bad. Likewise, there are other ulterior motives that may inform "public broadcasting." There's a fine line between publicly-funded journalism and state-sponsored propaganda.
do you believe that PBS or NPR have crossed that line in ways that for-profit, privately-owned media has not?
Ask anyone on the half of the country who doesn't vote blue, or necessarily get along with the latest developments in gender identity, of NPR gives their worldview any coverage whatsoever that isn't bashing and negative.