Does Great Britain Have Any Privately Owned TV News Agencies?
I was wondering, because I think that any country would benefit from a combination of government and privately owned TV news agencies. They may serve to counter each others' biases.
Although the BBC does a great job and is semi-autonomous, it is ultimately quite dangerous to have only government run news. I know they have other forms of privately owned news media, such as newspapers, magazines and internet, but TV is probably the most prominent source, and (potentially) the most easily used to skew people's views.
I think it would do the US a lot of good to have a government run news agency alongside the private ones as well. Besides the BBC News clips on PBS once in a while, I mean.
It might be harder for CNN to only report fluff or sensationalism if there were prominent news channels run by the government for whom profit is not a motive. How could CNN continue to pretend all the atrocities don't exist when we are seeing it all one channel over?
Any possible government bias might also be countered by the current privately owned news agencies. And, of course, there would need to be safeguards in place to prevent such bias in the first place. Any government news agency would have to be protected from having its strings pulled by government.