Orrin Judd:
It's an odd notion the public radio folks have that running commercials would make them beholden to the business sector but that they can remain perfectly independent while suckling at the government teat.
Not really. The government is not sufficiently competent to manipulate public broadcasting without telling it what to do or bribing them to do so, both of which outrage the intellectual/smug class.
I have a post on public broadcasting coming down the pipe, but for now I would ask: Why is being 'beholden' to someone - essentially, being responsible to someone and being held accountable
by someone, considered so unholy? Is it truly to the benefit of society to let those whose job it is to entertain and influence us to be completely insulated from our point of view? Or is it that our interest naturally run against those of the government and corporations. Most all of us would agree that they often do, but without the institutions that surround us, from what framework are those journalists/performers drawing from that gives them a particular insight to what we're interested in, what we need to know, and what we ought to think? And if they're wrong, what recourse would we have in changing that framework?
Comment spam is an ongoing problems that we're trying to address. Previously we required people to create accounts and log in. I am thankful to say that is no longer the case. We're giving Captcha another try and are playing around with a text-based Q&A variant of Captcha. So bear with us as we try to figure out how to best get a handle ont he problem. Please note that any comment on a post more than 30 days old will go into the moderation queue, where I will get to it when I can which could be once a week.
