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Comment by libraryatnight | Hacker News Reader

PBS has some great stuff, but people don't watch it. Their news program is actually good - if you're someone in the US that likes an evening news program but gets exhausted by local stations that don't actually do news beyond warm fuzzies and outright terror, and major outlets that do some news then flog it for 48 hours until their opinions are indistinguishable from their reporting, it's worth checking out.

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PBS and NPR are the same. They are private non-profits whose existence is blessed by Congress and given partial, indirect financial support by government. By contrast, the BBC is full on government agency whose revenue comes from a specific tax.

Exactly.

It's always really odd to watch an episode of eg NOVA about climate change only to see the underwriting by the Koch foundation.

It seems like they aren't selling influence or pulling punches for their benefactors... but would I actually be able to tell if they were?

"Name washing"? Is there such term/phrase?

I stopped watching a show on PBS once the API (American Petroleum Institute) began sponsoring it.

They don't advertise it enough, but if you donate something like $6/mo. you get "PBS passport" access on the PBS app that lets you watch years of old PBS stuff. It's like Netflix with way better content.

Woah I didn't know this. Thanks.

PBS News Hour is a great resource. They now have a YouTube channel with all their content, including live streams. They tend to have a very sensible approach to news. They don't have sponsors to please or audience numbers to hit. They also broadcast considerably less than the 24-hour news networks, which means the ratio of news to opinion is much higher. Their goal seems to be inform, not inflame. I like them.

The local radio station played the PBS news hour even though it’s a tv show. It works that way too. My drive schedule changed so I’m not sure they do anymore. (WGBH Boston)

Funny that you say this, because people that are pushing polarization have picked public broadcasting exactly as one of their main targets in Germany (calling it fake news paid by the government) trying to defund it. In Germany public broadcasters for the first time have a budget of that passed 10 billion EUR.

$10B EUR per year? That's...unglaublich.

And unions demand more: https://m-faz-net.translate.goog/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/1...

There are also separate podcast channels, one with full broadcast episodes, one with specific segments. I'll dip into the latter most often for the PBS take on a story of interest.

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