Comment by pfortuny
5 months ago
That is not what "public" means in ordinary language. Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
Support by donations is always dependent on the largest donor.
5 months ago
That is not what "public" means in ordinary language. Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
Support by donations is always dependent on the largest donor.
See Post, Washington to see what "dependent on the largest donor" is revealed to be.
Not going to argue semantics with you.
The US government was the largest donor until now. No single non-governmental donor will ever have that level of influence again.
I now realize (sorry) that my European mindset has tricked me, most likely. The term is very loaded here towards the meaning I gave it.
You are probably right.
My apologies.
it's not a semantic argument. you misunderstand the term in question.
Until this change, public broadcasting got 85% of its funding from donations, so whatever the term used to mean, that's what it means now.
4 replies →
>Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
For you, probably, for me it means "from/for the people".
Yeah, as in "We the people". As in "Of the people, by the people, for the people" Taxes are how "we the people" pay for public things (libraries, parks, highways, sidewalks, schools, etc.)
Those are synonyms.
"From the people" = supported by taxes. If it's supported by some small pots of private money, then it's not from "the people", it's from a select few people.
For example, Bezos "donates" (owns) WAPO. Would you classify WAPO as "from the people"? Obviously not. Just doing private money exempts you from being "from the people".
"For the people" = equal access. The only services that have equal access are tax payer funded ones.
Is your private insurance equal access? No, it's tied to your employer.
Now what about roads, parks, sidewalks, the fucking DMV? Are those equal access?
I'm sure someone, somewhere, can find a counter example, but a counter example does not a rule make. 99.99% of the time, "private stuff" = only for some people, "tax payer funded stuff" = everyone at least has an equal opportunity to access it.
See my comment below: in usual terms, in Europe “public” means technically “supported by taxes” -which is why most “public” media is most of the time pro-government (bar inertia).
One does not imply the other.
Many European countries have public broadcasters 100% funded by tax money, yet consistently rank among the most impartial and factual media. Them being 100% independent in their reporting, also from the government that funds them, is core to their mission, and they usually have oversight boards to ensure this. That's how it should work in a working democracy. The people decided that a truly independent news source is to everyone's benefit so should be publicly funded.