Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

The BBC's Pound of Flesh

buzzbee | 05.08.2003 14:55 | Analysis | Culture | London

If the Board of Governors is so confident that the BBC is universally adored by viewers and listeners, let it vie for subscriptions in the open market.

The BBC's Pound of Flesh
By Val MacQueen



The once-venerable BBC has fallen upon hard times. The international news organization, which once enjoyed a worldwide reputation as the gold standard of impartial broadcasting, has become an outpost of the Left. Since the Sixties, the radical Left has become embedded in the BBC, transforming it into a kingdom of its own. Its efforts are lavishly supported by the mandatory £116 annual “license” fees of 20 million households. You see, for the pleasure of watching TV, or listening to the radio, in Britain, there is a £116 ($174) ‘license fee,’ which goes solely to support the BBC.  It matters not whether you ever watch the BBC or listen to it – and certainly not whether you agree with its Euro-socialist outlook.  The BBC’s argument in favor of the mandatory license fee was that it kept the BBC from relying on commercial dollars, and thus freed the BBC not to pander to advertisers.  Whether British seniors on social security, lower income people, young people – and millions of other wage earners wouldn’t prefer to save the £116 p.a. license fee and endure some pandering to commercial (as opposed to political) interests was never on the table. If there’s a television in your house, you are legally obliged, under legal penalty, to pay for the upkeep of the BBC.
. . . Even if the BBC is sowing the seeds of dissension within your ranks. During the Iraqi war, the military personnel and sailors on board the HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, became so depressed by the BBC’s coverage, they petitioned the ship’s captain to cancel the BBC and replace it with CNN. Anyone who depended, during the war, on the BBC alone for coverage would have been astounded at the news that the Coalition won.  Nor is the BBC merely declining among veterans and their families. Its most important radio station, Radio Four, which caters to an educated, middle class audience, has lost 339,000 disaffected listeners since March.   That is one-third-of-a-million license payers who gave up on BBC radio’s defeatist coverage, which their mandatory fees financed.  In addition to being an avid supporter of the United Nations, the BBC lavishes unwarranted favorable coverage upon Amnesty International. (Amnesty has expressed dainty reservations about the killing of Uday and Qusay.) 
Current affairs and discussion programs now routinely feature two or three left-wing panelists and one moderately right-leaning participant (for “balance”); never expect to see a seasoned and effective conservative on the British “telly.”  The studio audience is packed with fellow left-wingers who begin to bray and drown out the conservative the instant he opens his mouth.  In other words, the BBC has arrogantly cast off its mantle of impartiality and its duty to cover the major strands of its license payers’ political beliefs.
The BBC is a relentless promoter of “multiculturalism,” quixotically fostering the pretense that Britain (which is 94 percent Anglo-Saxon) is a predominantly black country.  Domestic stories on its website are routinely illustrated with photos taken from the 5.8 percent ethnic immigrant population.  The BBC’s online feedback section, “Have Your Say” – which they pretend “fairly reflects” the views of correspondence received – is overwhelmingly weighted to anti-Americanism (e.g., the constant refrain that U.S. troops “torture” prisoners or war) and rude sniping at the Conservative Party.  Since Blair’s Labour Party came to power six years ago, the job of Chairman of the Board of Governors has gone to Labour apparachik and party contributor Gavyn Davis.  The job of Director-General has gone to another Labour contributor, Greg Dyke.  The chief political editor, Andrew Marr, had previously been a well-known Labour-supporting opinion columnist.  All three were parachuted into the corporation just after Labour won the election…so much for its formerly impeccable reputation for neutrality.   The BBC is now regarded, even by many Britons, as the propaganda arm of No 10 Downing St.
Many believe the current mutual flinging of mud over the death of Dr. David Kelly is a distraction orchestrated by Blair’s wizard of Oz, smoke and mirror expert Alastair Campbell, to neatly obfuscate what Dr. Kelly had really been saying.  The Labour government isn’t going to threaten the license fee and the institutionally statist BBC isn’t going to do any damage to the government.  Their symbiotic relationship is too strong.
Now, along comes Sunday Times columnist Jonathan Miller, who, around a year ago, began campaigning for the abolition of the license fee.  If the Board of Governors is so confident that the BBC is universally adored by viewers and listeners, let it vie for subscriptions in the open market, he says.  Or let it go to the wall.
Normally, the BBC flicks off nasty little nonentities who make such suggestions with a supercilious sneer, but Jonathan Miller is a national name.  Worse, he’s witty and self-confident.  And he has the intestinal fortitude for a fight.   Worse still, he’s putting himself on the line by publicly refusing to pay his mandatory license fee.  And he has a platform: His column in The Sunday Times.
Miller has been doing a little investigative work of his own and has discovered that the draconian license fee collecting operation – provided by a company named Capita, which was last year judged Britain’s most intrusive company - is targeted by zip code.  The poorer you are, the more likely you are to get threatening letters and, later, have “an inspector” turn up on your doorstep.  Pointless to claim you haven’t got a TV, because Capita has disguised detector vans prowling the streets of Britain, and can tell you what hours you had your TV on and what you watched.
Primary targets for harassment are single mothers in the poorest areas of Britain, presumably because such persons have neither the educational nor monetary resources to take on the mighty, monolithic BBC.  Penalty for not being able to pay your license fee?  A fine.  For those who can’t manage the fine, it’s a mandatory prison sentence.  In fact, a high proportion of Britain’s female prisoners are single mothers who couldn’t swing the license fee or the £400 ($600) fine.  Next most targeted are the unemployed and senior citizens.  Capita is without parallel among other debt collection agencies in Britain, employing intimidating practices.  One such tactic is pasting posters on the London Underground and other areas showing a residential block, with the message (real streets and zip codes are used):  This is Elm Street.  A family on the 1800 block hasn’t paid their license fee.  Do you know who they are? 
Another intimidating tactic is the threatening letters they send out. Capita catches around 1,000 license evaders per day, from which one might conclude that the public is not as enamored of the BBC as it says they are.  Clearly, vast numbers of middle class viewers also try to evade the license.  The difference is, when the middle classes are caught, they stump up the license fee and pay the fine.
To whence do these fees go? Anne Robinson, familiar to Americans as the black-clad “Cruella de Ville” quiz mistresses on The Weakest Link, who is paid £3m ($4.5m) a year out of those license fees.  Total salaries and bonuses for the Executive Committee, including Director General Greg Dyke, come to £4.825m ($7,237,500).  Including benefits, that total rises to around $1 billion a year.   Mind you, this isn’t to fund the BBC’s 40,000 staff members.  This is just for the Executive Committee. 
The BBC also competes outrageously unfairly with commercial broadcasters, using coffers awash in license money to launch new services and digital channels that commercial companies would need to borrow to fund start-up.  Indeed, so profligate has it become that it runs a 24-hour channel, Liquid News, which doesn’t appear to have any viewers.
Given the range of digital and satellite channels now available, the question is, how long can the BBC hold onto to its privileged status of a guaranteed three billion or so pounds per year?  Well, as long as the Labour Party is in power, it would seem.   But, as journalist Barbara Amiel writes, “If Parliament allows the BBC to represent the Kelly matter as a battle for its editorial independence rather than a fight for its relentless bias, the BBC will continue to substitute its own policies for those of the elected officials in determining the success or failure of foreign policy.”
That Jonathan Miller has frightened the BBC is evidenced by the fact that the BBC mustered six famous trial lawyers for a preliminary hearing of his case before a lowly magistrate’s court to determine what evidence would be permissible at his court case.  Even one high-powered trial lawyer would have been pushing the boat out a bit for a magistrate’s hearing.  But six?  Miller won’t have a substantive hearing until September, when he expects to be sent to prison.  As he says:  “It would take a very brave judge to find that the license fee isn’t justified and isn’t really legal.  Such a pronouncement in a court of law would destroy the BBC at a stroke, and the BBC is not a nice enemy to have.”  Then again, neither is a martyred columnist for the Sunday Times.

buzzbee

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

you're mad you are

05.08.2003 15:29

The BBC is too LEFT-wing??

What on earth do you make of IndyMedia?

hack


Is there no....

05.08.2003 15:43

Is there no www.corporatemedia.com you coulod go to to post this nonsense?

Sonic


Muppetry of the highest order!

05.08.2003 19:09

I especially love this bit:

"The BBC is now regarded, even by many Britons, as the propaganda arm of No 10 Downing St."

This guy is complaining that the BBC is radically left-wing in one breath, and then saying it is the mouth-piece of Tony "Neo-con" Blair in his next.

I love the consistancy!

The BBC isn't perfect but I would rather have it than FOX (Fucking Obnoxiously Xenophobic) news.

 http://samizdat.zapto.org

Dannyboy


bbc is corrupt

07.03.2004 13:56

back in the Eighties and early Nineties the BBC used to be really good.
making the best comedy in the world an excellent documentaries.
and now they are very one-sided with everything.
pro hunt,anti American and have became very political correct.
they no longer make good comedy but use unfunny cheap imports or reruns of the old lot.
the documentaries have been dumbed down with silly camera movements and very loud background music.
and the rest of the BBC TV viewing is makeover shows and reality TV.
how can it possibility get any worse than that.

brad


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech