# Posted 3:58 AM by Patrick Belton
GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED DUMBING DOWN OF CULTURE: While the NYT public editor
makes a virtue of his newspaper's reporting on candidates' hairstyles and sartorial choices, the BBC does the Grey Lady one better with substantive, in-depth reporting on
crop circles,
psychics, and, yes, a
webcam of a BBC reporter spending a night in a haunted hotel. Considering that one of the stronger arguments to be made in favour of publicly funded broadcasting is that high culture won't survive in a fully market-driven public sphere (and, therefore, the likes of
Classic FM's "relaxing" Mozart will drive out the more serious, undebased cultural coinage of a
BBC 3 or 4), it's not entirely clear why funds from the public treasury should be drawn upon to provide broadcasting fare which seems, if anything, a fair cut
below what the market left to its own resources will provide.
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