Put The Public Back In Public Broadcasting

Jeff Cohen, (who unsurprisingly happens to be everywhere!!) stated the following during an interview with Common Dreams, in order to put in perspective on how our country treats public broadcasting:  "What is it in our country? $3.75, per person, tax money, goes to public broadcasting." 
Severely less than a wide range of other countries in the world. And at this point the question is why. 

When simply googling the term "Public Broadcasting", naturally the first result is PBS, but about 4 results under that is what the technical definition of a Public Broadcasting Network is supposed to be. 

"Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service." It then goes on and on about the funding and what organizations contribute, and how "The great majority are operated as private not-for-profit corporations" 

Oh? soooo... since when do private and non-profit correlate with corporate? I'd probably say rarely, but maybe more than I though? 

By Public broadcasting relying more and more on corporate funds, isn't that taking the public out of it? The fact that other countries are so heavily involved with their tax payer dollars being devoted to public broadcasting, they are the ones truly utilizing the pubic to see what they want. If there's less pubic and more corporate there will be less of what the public needs to see for the benefit of the pubic watching, and more of what corporate wants the public to see for the benefit of corporate control. 

It's quite like the fight for maintaining net neutrality, but in terms of broadcasting. I do still believe they want to inform the pubic, but I'm sure that before August 2016 when the PBS funding standards were last edited, there were a lot less grey areas where corporate could some how slip through the cracks. 

They say, "While funding and fundraising are necessary to support the development and production of content, producers must be free from the influence of funders. This firewall is essential to maintaining the public’s trust." 

Free from the influence of funders? but when big corporate funders are helping make someones dreams come true, is this firewall still apparent? I honestly do not know if billionaires with a set agenda on how they want to shape a film, are going to get opposing views about structuring content from  a producer who is just trying to get their story out there. Not everyone is willing to back out from huge backers, if they think the information is still important, even with the "little" bit of tweaking the funders may ask for. Which in that case, is pure influence. 

There are a number of methods to fund projects and its important to utilize them. We learned about places that will help find funding only through a pitch for media projects. As well as people who just asked for $50 from all of their supporters. Funders back out, and producers still manage to make amazing work. Ask family members is all else fails! I firmly believe there are still ways to make amazing journalism with out the influence of "the billionaire ideal". People, we just have to realize that it's possible before all the hard work goes down the drain.