While I concur that Rome rotted from within - and to a far greater degree than this article suggests - it's sadly not the case that the UK has a "well funded public broadcaster" of merit. In reality, the BBC has always been deeply confused, with a mandate to inform and educate but also with a mandate to appeal to ordinary people (e.g. morons) so as to justify the imposition of a rather steep license fee. The result: low-quality sensationalist rubbish to please the irredeemably simple-minded and ignorant masses. The BBC is little more than a conduit for other nations' propaganda (as the Russian ambassador said on a BBC radio show several years ago, "the truth is what we decide it is, and you repeat it for us"). The BBC repeated all the Brexit lies without comment, leading to the single greatest act of self-harm by any developed nation since 1945. The BBC continues to deliver stories that are nothing more than crude propaganda for the far-right Conservative government. And the BBC continues to churn out mindless entertainments for the empty-headed masses. As such, it cannot be cited as a prop to anything other than the further erosion of civic and legal norms in the interests of far-right blustering incompetent self-satisfied demagogues. And that's the good news! The bad news is that ultra-right newspapers like the Sun, Daily Mail, and Telegraph spew fascist nonsense into the heads of cretins every single day, thus ensuring that the UK is headed for self-destruction under the heels of far-right politicians while neurotic lefty-trendies shriek about imaginary harms caused by miniscule infractions of transiently popular Politically Correct babble.