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there's a difference between state-supported and state-run---another way to say the same thing is that the bbc is not pravda.
in the former, you can imagine a media apparatus set up as a kind of external feedback loop, which would require that it be and remain independent at the level of content---one argument for it might be that this relation helps shape a more democratic political context (this assuming that there's a mixed or multi-center context, not a monopoly---it just works better)--another would be that the distance built into information gathering and assemblage from state policy/politics would also benefit those who animated the state apparatus itself, just as reliable statistics make the formulation of rational policy easier (another thing that the american state hasn't really bothered with since the reagan period explicitly is ideologically neutral statistics--think inflation rate---but there have long been problems with indices---think structural unemployment numbers in the states).
in the latter, information is an extension or expression of state ideology---which makes it useless as a feedback loop.
there's nothing about the american model that prevents a version of the same situation from taking shape, obviously. same problems arise, too: just a different way to get to it. there's no particular reason to have the slightest faith that "markets" *do* or *cause* anything in this regard. that of course works both ways, in that the reverse could also be the case and the ideological frame that is dominant amongst the major media could be in opposition to the state ideology---but that would be an accident, or a result of a history, and not a function of the presence or absence of market relations, whatever that means.
i'm not a huge fan of npr at this point. it was once a more interesting outlet for news, but since the reagan era, it's drifted more and more into the same grid as everything else.
there's more, but my brain hurts at the moment.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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