Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is not owned by the government, rather by the state. In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
>Since 2008 the channel has been wholly owned by the French government Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing? Kinda shocked that people here applaud state-owned media (there is no difference between "government-owned" or "state-owned").
When there's a news channel funded by the state (instead of ads), most other private news are forced to keep up the quality and they also have the opportunity to call out any bad news and biases published by the state channel. This way no news outlets stray too far from the truth or become unreadable slop. It's better overall.