The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
If you look at the history of the Public Broadcasting Act [1] that established the CPB and eventually PBS, it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV. Its authors wanted to make it easier for smaller, non-commercial entities to produce and distribute high-quality educational content.In that regard, the Internet (aided by inexpensive video gear and editing software) has succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. The breadth and depth of educational content available just on YouTube is incredible.The same forces that make it easy to produce and distribute educational content also make it easy to produce and distribute misinformation. This is a problem, but's unclear how a "PBS for the internet" would solve it.For example, if you look at the one concrete piece of legislation mentioned in the article:> The Local Journalism Sustainability Act takes a different approach to the government grant model. The bill would, for example, give a tax credit to people who donate to nonprofit newsrooms, or to small businesses who buy advertising at a nonprofit outlet.It's not clear to me why people wouldn't just choose to donate to or buy advertising in outlets that promote whatever form of misinformation or partisan information that suits their tastes.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Broadcasting_Act_of_196...