That is not what "public" means in ordinary language. Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
Support by donations is always dependent on the largest donor.
That is not what "public" means in ordinary language. Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
Support by donations is always dependent on the largest donor.
See Post, Washington to see what "dependent on the largest donor" is revealed to be.
Not going to argue semantics with you.
The US government was the largest donor until now. No single non-governmental donor will ever have that level of influence again.
I now realize (sorry) that my European mindset has tricked me, most likely. The term is very loaded here towards the meaning I gave it.
You are probably right.
My apologies.
it's not a semantic argument. you misunderstand the term in question.
Until this change, public broadcasting got 85% of its funding from donations, so whatever the term used to mean, that's what it means now.
Honest question: apart from the name ("Public BC"), what makes it "public" in the US if most of its income is private?
It gets direct donations from the public.
But then what is the difference between that and any NGO?
>Public is intended to mean "supported by taxes".
For you, probably, for me it means "from/for the people".
Yeah, as in "We the people". As in "Of the people, by the people, for the people" Taxes are how "we the people" pay for public things (libraries, parks, highways, sidewalks, schools, etc.)
See my comment below: in usual terms, in Europe “public” means technically “supported by taxes” -which is why most “public” media is most of the time pro-government (bar inertia).