UK Broadcasting Woes

The other day I wrote an entry about The Great Global Warming Swindle, a film shown on the UK Channel 4 last week, and asked "Why is a UK government channel showing it? Who paid for it and who received the proceeds?"

This was a show that aimed to discredit climate change. The channel is publicly funded. Short of calling Channel 4 irresponsible, today's Guardian quotes one of the channel's founders as saying the channel has "lost its soul", and showing an anti global warming film "looks like opportunism." May a publicly funded channel air a production that may not be in the interest of the general public? What level of responsibility do public media outlets have as far as choosing their content is concerned? How does their degree of responsibility vary compared to commercial media, or does it?