Comment by Maarten88 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Maarten88 | Hacker News Reader

A big difference between the US media and the rest of the developed world seems to be a complete absence of state-owned/subsidized/run media. To me, this seems much more problematic than the limited competition between corporate media.

In the US, it seems that news/stories/investigative reporting without some commercial interest to some company tends to go underreported. There is no money in being critical towards business (except extreme cases) for the media companies, who depend on good corporate relations for advertising income. Critical reporting towards businesses is not happening and government mistrust is promoted with nothing to balance this.

I think that a healthy media climate needs a mix of commercial and public journalism, that balance each other out.

As someone living in the Netherlands, there are several popular TV shows on public TV that, I think, could never exist in the US, because they would be seen as harming corporate interest. An example being a program investigating the background, production and health aspects of all kinds of food.

We have NPR and PBS, but no large/official federal apparatus. I think a big part is the history of suspicion of government (part of America's founding myth, etc) but there's also always been a robust private media in the US. Lots of Founders, eg Ben Franklin, were publishers.

Culturally, many people would dismiss state-owned media perspective as a kind of Pravda. Because of the cultural perspective, two things would happen: firstly, politicians would think it's OK to instruct such media to follow a particular party line; and secondly, journalists and presenters that are the visible face of the media would also follow the party line, because they think that's where the money is coming from, so it would be stupid to do otherwise.

The cultural perspective is widespread and it's at the core of many Americans' cynical approach to the government. "We're from the government and we're here to help" are genuinely scary words to these people; they have not bought into the idea of government as a social contract, or the idea that a consensus of principles could lead to publicly funded media without excessive political bias. Instead, many Americans view government as a necessary evil that we only institute to restrain our worst vices, and if the government shows up, it's because something went badly wrong; that the best government is no government, which we would have if we acted morally.

> two things would happen: firstly, politicians would think it's OK to instruct such media to follow a particular party line; and secondly, journalists and presenters that are the visible face of the media would also follow the party line, because they think that's where the money is coming from, so it would be stupid to do otherwise.

In my experience the opposite is true.

eg in Austria:

* politicans aren't allowed to interfere w/ the state owned programming and it's usually deeply rooted opinion in those institutes to be independent - they are a service to the people of the country not the current government

* private media are usually considered to be in favor of the party that pays them the most in ad spending and follows their own political agendas

* state owned news shows are usually known to be more critical (we done the research, stop BSing please) towards politicians than private ones (which politicians obviously consider unfair)

obviously in reality everything is shades of grey and not black/white. eg journalists still tend to have own political worldviews and report biased with them. but state owned doesn't by default mean propaganda channel.

I know; but Americans don't, and a state owned channel would be run by Americans, viewed by Americans and judged by Americans. It would be American, ie be an instrumental tool of power.

Most western european countries have public media that operate independently from the government.

Many forms are possible: the British BBC single broadcaster model to the fragmented model of my country with many competing broadcasting associations. I think most models work out well enough.

Of course, comparing to Pravda is a straw man argument: I was promoting a balance between (independent) public and commercial media

I'm Irish and live in the UK; I understand your perspective. I don't think the BBC would work in the US, though, for cultural reasons I tried to outline. The political economy is structured such that it would be fatally lopsided.

> many Americans view government as a necessary evil that we only institute to restrain our worst vices

I'm tempted to say "Why do so many Americans hate America?" It seems like a sort of anti-national nationalism.

Pretty sure it's the two-party system giving people a non-choice between options that really nobody wants. They've been calling it picking between the lesser of two evils for as long as I can remember.

The real question is why they settle for this.

Look at the recent elections, those two people were supposed to be the best candidate options for presidency from the entire population? Really none of the people in the entire nation were better suited for this job?

... on the other hand, the two-party system in the UK is not much better, but they still manage to have the publicly funded BBC. fortunately :)

Whilst not state-owned, and only modestly state-supported, PBS, CPB, NPR, PRI, APM, and PRX produce programming and operate television and radio stations across the country.

NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered news magazine programmes are the 2nd and 3rd highest rated radio programmes by listenership.

(Rush Limbaugh comes in 1st.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_rad...

What about Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe?

Also all the other media organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy?

PBS?

Netflix shows all kinds of stuff about how food and big business can be bad. Since they subsist on fees alone, and not on advertising, I guess they can be more free to show what people want. The good news is that with the internet, you are free to access whatever news source you want. I personally don't even have a TV subscription, because I can find what I want without annoying ads online anyways.

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