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A comment on TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England. Parent comment

Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England by audunw on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @06:14AM (#25832274)
It's not good for the government to have too much direct control over state media. They executive branch should not be able to change the budget from year to year on their own, since they can "punish" state media if they don't say things the government likes. Using tax revenue would generally give the executive branch power to set or at least propose the budget.

When Norway recently moved to tax funding state media, I think they solved this by making it a completely separate dedicated tax. At least that's what was discussed, not sure about the details of the final implementation. So it can only be changed by a vote in parliament, which is more visible to the public, can take more time, and requires a majority of parties to agree on that specific change.

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Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England by lotsofpulp on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @09:31AM (#25833701)
Any payment the government forces you to make is a tax, in my opinion. And I see no difference in the “government” forcing you to pay a TV license versus bundling it in tax revenue. As you wrote, the same government can just preclude that amount of tax revenue from being altered by the “executive branch”, if that is the goal.

But otherwise, the “government” can always alter the tv license fee, or the tax. It’s always under their control, and changing its label doesn’t do anything.

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Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England by philwelch on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @11:24AM (#25835032)
I really don’t see how one has anything to do with the other. In the US, PBS and NPR are funded through the general fund and they still have editorial independence. But maybe that’s because the US system has a stronger separation of the legislative and executive branches.
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Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England by nwellnhof on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @08:32AM (#25833241)
In Germany, the budget for public broadcasting is decided by a somewhat independent commission. Sounds good in theory, but after a few decades, public broadcasters now have a budget of more than 8 billion € per year. This is more than the revenue of all private TV stations combined.
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