State-funded and state-controlled are two different things. The government hasn't ever attempted to control PBS until the GOP got into power. They threatened to cut funding if they didn't abide by their uniform perception on various issues and follow the example of Fox News. Good news is, is that PBS hasn't buckled under the pressure from the Republicans, who have demostrated numerous times their want to regulate the press.

State-funded sources in free democracies where the freedom of the press is granted is the best type of news source you can recieve. Because the organization would otherwise be only interested in making money, and not informing the public. This is the fundamental problem with the mainstream news networks. They're companies. Their only interest is money. Consequently they're going to do what is popular, what's going to give them the most ratings. Obviously, being critical of the government (which is the press' job) doesn't sell too well esspecially in the post-9/11 world. They don't want to be typecast as "anti-american" by right-wing pundits. Which if you want an example you only need to look at the New York Times...and it didn't even really criticize the government that much.

Instead they found out that playing off of patriotism, and creating chauvinism gets them ratings. Consequently, a conservative bias will get them the bucks. You only need to look at Fox News and Bill O'Reilly for evidence of this. Which even you continue to brag that Bill O'reilly is one of the most watched pundits on television. The other networks saw this and are now doing the same thing and experiementing with the chauvinism and servitude that Fox News spreads. Now channels once criticized by far right-wing pundits as liberal like CNN, are getting their own conservative pundits and spinning their own news.

However, if the news source is funded by the state and by "viewers like you", then their primary objective is to inform the public, not make money. Now they wont be afraid to criticize the government. And PBS is one of the only news networks that actually did its job in the run-up to the Iraq War. Objective analysis. An obligation to the American people that nearly all mainstream news networks are failing at, and that Fox News is working directly against at.

Hell, the Daily Show did better than the mainstream.

John Stewart is a hero of mine. Watch this (click)

What the hell? Do you have a reading comprehension disability? I've already said that Popular Mechanics left out a shit load of very important things in their skewed agenda. And you asked me to point them out. I pointed out just a couple of the major ones. And the ones that I pointed out have yet to be explained by you or any other source. And even the stuff that it covered left many of the questions unaswered, because all it did was just re-state the original theory in an anti-conspiracy tone.