But that happens everywhere in the world where there’s public television. In Spain that even happens with private television since they’ve been giving them money as some sort of “pandemic relief”, making sure they never speak ill of the measures put in place. Public television shouldn’t exist in this day and age.

This is so wrong and a huge misunderstanding.

If the state has such a stranglehold on the public channels then that is the underlying problem. It would have the same control over private media if it needed to.

Public media and/or limited state support for private news media is absolutely vital for a functioning democracy.

Playing the "x is good for democracy" card. If it's good for democracy, it's totally justified right?

And if someone claims X is good for democracy, he doesn't need to bring data because he's on the Good(TM) side, so he can skip that step, right?

Are you sure you are not erecting two strawmen there?

In a democracy, the public chooses their leaders. They do so based on the readily available information. If the only (or overwhelminly prevalent) sources of information have other agendas, such as serving the needs of their conglomerate owners or a totalitarian-aspiring government then that information will be of low quality and likely to further cement the power of those that control the media.

To counteract this, a way must be devised to ensure diligent journalistic types (of whom there is no shortage) have the means and security to do their proper diligence for the public.

Public television lacks the same corporatist incentives of private media, their inability to meaningfully criticize the party that feeds them notwithstanding. I’d prefer a mix of public and private media to private media alone.

I’d rather have corporatism than progressivism, but that’s me.

why?

Probably he or she conflates progressivism with inefficient, yet authorian marxist rule like in sowjet russia - and corporatism with efficient no-marxist but corporate authorian rule.

Vile.

Leaked emails indicate that government official ordered TV to create a smear campaign about one judge that just ruled aginst prime minister in a court case. And TV immediately complied.

I doubt it's the same in Spain.

Wrong, there's not 1 public television

theres 1 + 17 + even municipal television channels.. all at the expense of taxpayers, to make the government look good or push some politically loaded content

Not everywhere, BBC would be a good counterexample.