Very true. I remember vividly growing up in the 1980s and watching Big Bird explain the moral hazard of government-subsidized school lunches. The segment where Super Grover delivered weapons to Iranian forces in Iraq in exchange for funds for CIA-backed rebel groups in Nicaragua seemed rather convoluted and, frankly, outlandish, but I accepted it with an open mind.
These days I am more wise to the ways of the world, and it seems clear that had PBS’s intrusion into the free market not driven out private investment in educational television, I could have instead been exposed to superior, corporate-sponsored values. Alas.
The fact that they're beholden to different stakeholders is precisely why it's important to have robust publicly funded journalism and/or donor funded journalism in addition to traditional for-profit advertiser funded journalism.
Just as traditional news outlets are reluctant to upset their advertisers. Donor-funded local newspapers are hesitant to upset big local donors. The BBC is awesome at covering non-clickbaity stories that would never get the time of day from a profit-oriented news outlet, but has always gone easy on whoever is currently in power in the U.K.
At the end of the day, quality investigative journalism costs money, that money has to come from somewhere, and it's best if that money comes from many places rather than one. Allocating more money toward publicly funded and donor-funded news in the U.S. would help to counter to the monstrous infotainment media empires that advertisers have built.
Also, have you read or listened to public news recently? It feels like reading a textbook or eating raw vegetables: refreshingly dull. We need more of it.
The news that is pushed to you nowadays is already increasingly donor funded. The last 10 years, the tech elite have purchased many sense making media. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. The Atlantic is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs. The New Republic is owned by Chris Hughes. The Intercept is owned by Pierre Omidyar.
The narrowing and shifting of the Overton window is precisely due to donor funded journalism. It is just a reflection of the underlying shift in power in the society and economy as a whole.
Public news being dull is actually really bad. It means that there is no real debate. You are being fed what to think.
Also all 'sides' play this game. It is a reflection of the shift in power in the society as a whole. Oil has lost power. The Koch brother(s) have lost power.
Tech has gained power and now exerts influence. Education has gained power. Healthcare has gained power.
I'm pretty sure most of the money does not come from listeners, that's a myth they promulgate. The local stations are mostly rinkydink organizations that raise money from listeners (and say "listener support") and funnel it to the national organization to purchase the programming, but the national organization thrives on govt subsidies and keeps the budgets pretty much secret.
Nobody's ever come up with one, other than the free market. That's why the Constitution does not allow the government to limit free speech.
I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the belief that it's the profit motive that leads to corruption. Even a casual review of history will amply show that government funded news is not independent journalism nor unbiased journalism.
The US has always had a distinction between state and public ownership. You can do things on public lands that are restricted on government lands, for example.* The same can hold, and has held in the past, for Public media -- it does not necessarily mean State media. It requires effort to maintain the separation, yes, but not an impossible amount of effort.
*Not that the CPB is actually owned by the public, but the principle is closely related.
Well maybe if we spend enough time pontificating about the theoretical corruption of imperfect solutions a better one will fall from the sky on a stone tablet.
That's a fantasy. The people who provide the money always call the tune, even if it's the government, even if it's donations.
A more effective system is one that does not attempt to deny human nature, but takes advantage of it.