Alberto Dines, grand old man of the Brazilian press, complains, in Observatório da Imprensa, of the privatization of public broadcasting. I translate:

Would the BBC or PBS establish long-term partnerships with British or American commercial broadcasters? Hardly, although they do collaborate with one another.

The Ford Foundation, for its part, bankrolled the initiative of Fred W. Friendly to create the Public Broadcasting System, and then, some years later, to finance the BBC’s entry into the U.S. market.

Ford also bankrolls the OI, by the way.

In democratic countries, the television game takes place on a level playing field, with clearly defined roles distributed so as to balance the equation. The private sector bids on new channels in order to exploit them according to the norms and regulations approved by society. In order to balance out this scenario, the public sector creates public TV channels — as in the U.S…