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by osigurdson 1066 days ago
>> faint whenever "government" is mentioned

I don't believe the concern is necessarily the case that people fear current governments. The concern is that monotonic consolidation of power will eventually lead to a totalitarian state. Having a single, government funded, news channel is a tenet of any authoritarian state so likely best to avoid. Naturally the only way to have a single source is to have strong censorship laws which only allow government approved information. This is far riskier to democracy than random crack-pot journalists. Though we may have always lived in free countries, it is important to remember that even today the majority of the world's citizens live in non-free countries. Backsliding is possible - it has happened before and could happen again. I'd rather not think about this either but I think it is important to be mindful of the possibility.

>> BBC, NHK, CBC, PBS, France 24

I don't know anything about the others, but the CBC is considered controversial in Canada.

>> Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech - all private

I don't really understand the analogy here. Elite universities are large institutions, but do not exclude smaller ones (good). Wouldn't this essentially be what we have now (New York Times, Washington Post, etc).
1 comments
kristopolous 1066 days ago
You actually Are pearl clutching and reaching for the smelling salts.

I have multiple examples but you reach for some wild imagination because of some insane fanaticism of all things government. CBC has won multiple Pulitzers and Peabodies but I guess it's actually some communist menace.

Basically all the top countries in press freedom have a government news source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Ra...

Maybe 2 in the top 30 don't

This isn't productive. Let's end this.

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osigurdson 1066 days ago
Sorry, I don't understand the smelling salts reference but I assume it is non-positive. Is the CBC not controversial among a material percentage of the Canadian population currently? If winning an award from a respected institution provides one with a lifetime free pass, then please inform Harvey Weinstein of the news.

Is it insane to think that some country that is currently free may one day become non-free? It has happened before, so it is not clear by what logic you conclude that it can never happen again.

This isn't productive because your arguments are rather weak and now you are resorting to ad-hominems which is particularly distasteful.

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