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Comment by frigg | Hacker News Reader

Sputnik[1] is a Russian government-controlled website with very little credibility when it comes to anything Western. Secondly, this is Assange, while no doubt the US is guilty of a lot of things, Assange and Wikileaks' purpose seem to be an anti-US organization at this point.

I also find it ironic how a group "dedicated to transparency" aren't themselves transparent with their finances.

>The WikiLeaks chief said the US investigation of himself and others involved in leaking sensitive government information is a prime example of Washington engaging in lawfare

>"I'm an Australian, Why Is the US Investigating Me for Espionage?"

Is he serious?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_(news_agency)#Receptio...

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Instead of arguing where something is posted, it's better to concentrate arguments at things that matter. PG has an excellent hierarchy on where to concentrate disagreements [0].

And don't forget, BBC is also funded by a government. So is Canadian CBC. CNN also gets a lot of gov contracts and gov crossover.

And just recently, it was revealed that even 60 Minutes is engaging in propaganda on behalf of State Department [1].

Propaganda is truly everywhere now.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[1] https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/649628016268734464

BBC is not funded by government. It is a separate licence fee and have governance in place to keep it at a very long arm length away from government. Which may be a reason why the current government want to change/destroy/modernise ot so that it can influence output.

The BBC is funded by a government tax on TVs [1], and to an outsider this looks an awful lot like government funding.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

> The BBC is funded by a government tax on TVs

It's not a tax on TV's. It's a license you pay only if you watch live broadcast television. It is not funded through normal taxation mechanisms such as PAYE, VAT etc. Individuals and organisations decide whether they need to pay the TV License or not depending on whether they need to or not.

The license fee is collected by the BBC via private contractors (the major one being Capita) under the umbrella of the TV Licensing Authority. This money is paid to the UK government which then pays out to the BBC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

Compare how the World Service used to be funded to how the rest of the BBC is funded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service

> Like the rest of the BBC, the World Service is a Crown corporation of the UK Government. Until 2014, unlike the rest of the corporation, which is funded through a television licence fee, the World Service was funded through a Parliamentary grant-in-aid given by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 2008/9 the BBC World Service received 12.4% of the department's £2.2 billion budget[37][38] and in the financial year 2011/12, the service received £255.2 million from this grant.[39]

Well it's a good thing the government is strongly committed to preserving the freedom of the press for those media voices who still dare to criticize it, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversies...

>And don't forget, BBC is also funded by a government. So is Canadian CBC. CNN also gets a lot of gov contracts and gov crossover.

I don't know if BBC is, what is your source on that? As for the others, they may receive money from the government but they are now owned by the government like sputnik. I don't think either are remotely comparable to sputnik though.

The source of the news always matters and it's fair to point out if they are heavily biased.

Stop spreading FUD.

Of those 3, only Canada's CBC is government-owned or government-financed. BBC is financed by a separate levy on televisions, and CNN is and has always been a private corporation funded by advertising revenue. CNN doesn't have any government contracts, and any government crossover is simply them employing a few former/washed-up politicians as talk show hosts.

Snowden's Twitter doesn't reveal that 60 Minutes is engaged in propaganda...it merely indicates that it asked about a few issues suggested by the government. This is not propaganda.

Sputnik and RT are the same animal, Kremlin propaganda pushers of the 21st century.

If Wikileaks is anti-US, is then tor project a anti-China project? Most of their yearly talk on CCC is about their success in breaking the censorship in China, much of their success is about how effective tor is against the great firewall, and many news papers present a China vs Tor Project narrative. The Tor project was also initially funded by the US military, so even the money tells a anti-China narrative.

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