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Comment by jds_ | Hacker News Reader

I would like to note that PBS does actually publish Youtube videos via PBS Digital Studios[0][1]. They have great creators making PBS quality content but in "Youtube" style formats with a wide range of topics (science, popular culture, art, food, news, and music).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_Digital_Studios [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels

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We watch the full PBS NewsHour most nights, simulcast/streamed live on YouTube (also available on all/most PBS affiliates) ... and it's available for later viewing as well. Some would say it leans a bit left but I think it's the best unbiased presentation of (U.S.) national concerns. They get wide access for interview to the most relevant American and non-American persons across a wide range of topics and are not afraid to pose the tough questions.

> Some would say it leans a bit left but I think it's the best unbiased presentation of (U.S.) national concerns

It’s definitely “unbiased” as long as “unbiased” means “standard US neoliberal views”. I say this as a neoliberal who watches it.

If you are watching news and it doesn’t seem unfair in some way to you, you agree with its editorial biases.

It's centrist, it's just that looking at facts instead of simply accepting what politicians say at face value often tends to lead to support for political talking points from the left.

This isn't intrinsic to left or right wing ideologies, there are plenty of areas where nobody has a monopoly on good policy, but when it comes to Democratic and Republican political leaders, The Dems look to scientific consensus (climate change, public health, economic disparities) and factual information in deciding on policy outcomes, while the GOP has a preferred set of outcomes they are looking to support.

It's not centrist. It's pro status quo. "Things are mostly OK, and in the few cases where they're a little bit bad, we're here to tell you about them."

Is there a meaningful difference? Isn't your definition of status-quo more or less the position taken by "centrists"?

Well, in terms of whatever the current Overton Window is, that's probably true.

But if you view "left", "right" and "center" as having slightly more absolute definitions than the constantly shifting Overton Window, it's not really the same. "pro status quo" in an authoritarian fascist regime would not correspond to "center" on this absolute scale, even if in the context of that society, it might be roughly in the middle of the OW.

Yes, obviously as soon as you look at more than one place or time. Think about it, the status quo varies. Also the current status quo is neoliberal, which is right-wing for Europe and South Aemrica, so not centrist in absolute terms.

"Centrist" in relation to the current US Overton fits squarely into the right-wing compared to "centrist" in relation current and past societies in the world.

I'm going to push back on that a little bit.

I think that climate change denial is one of many ways the GOP has sold its soul in the past 20 years, but the Democratic party takes it as axiomatic that certain climate change interventions are less harmful than climate change itself.

We can reasonably quantify flooding of coastal real-estate, but that is likely to be only a small fraction of the effects. So the overall picture of climate change looks like a giant pile of risk, rather than a clear outcome. The Democratic party has come to a consensus that the best way to treat the giant pile of risk is to treat the cost of allowing it to continue as approximately infinity.

50 years ago it was widely agreed upon that the US (and possibly humanity) faced an existential threat from thermonuclear war. Some people argued that unilateral disarmament was the best solution, but there were other points of view as well.

I would love a world in which the GOP were arguing about which climate-change interventions are not worth it rather than one in which the GOP just pretends that it's not happening (or not related to CO2 emissions).

FWIW The Democratic Party has its own blind spots on policy outcomes with regards to scientific consensus e.g. when it comes to affordable housing. Perhaps the stakes are higher when it comes to climate change, but the number of times I have heard a Democratic politician say "Supply and demand does not apply to X" without any evidence of that is rather mind-boggling.

The very fact that Republicans continue to deny the existence and threat from anthropocentric climate change leads to simple understandings of what Dems actually want to do.

The Democratic party has a wide range of opinions on how to deal with climate change, but I'd suggest people look at the Party Platform from 2020 to see how it wants to address it.

It includes some bold stuff in terms of changing the US economy towards being zero emissions, but with goals set five, ten or fifteen years from 2020. That's hardly setting the cost at infinity.

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...

I used to watch Newshour most nights but since last summer I've quit. too many stories are unbearably biased. and Mr Capehart is a poor substitute for Mr Shields on Fridays. The former is so predictable, why watch

My wife also misses Mr Shields greatly, I do too.

https://youtu.be/D5lvGMCF9jA?t=3270

It cannot be unbiased when it's corporate supported.

PBS Space Time (from your list) is one of my favorite channels. Such great content of which I can't speak highly enough. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

CPB also funds local public radio affiliates and NPR.

But I think the paper is calling for more than just local news. They want expansive digital properties to supplement all our browsing habits.

Yes, and the article is talking about deplatforming issues. What if Alphabet decided it didn't like what PBS was saying, and decided to use its leverage as owner of the platform to influence PBS content? Given everything crazy that has transpired over the last few years, it's not so far fetched now. Maybe it has already happened. Sure, eventually we would find out about it, but in the meantime great damage to society could be done.

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