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British Goverment to Reshape BBC Governance
AtariAmarok writes "The British government recently announced plans to reshape how the BBC is governed.. The changes are said to scrap the system that has been in place for 77 years. Some are worried that the independence of the "Beeb" could be compromised, and Conservative lawmakers are worried that it does not allow for enough oversight (leaves it too independent?)."
Not enough oversight?? What about freedom of expression and speech?
Admitidly the BBC has had a few problems, but nothing that ammounts to more than poking the goverment (hey most people in england happen to think the goverment deserved a good poking for taking us to war on a lie).
:)
It's an asset which few other countries have, to turn it into a goverment properganda machine *shudder*, Gues we'd just have to start watching fox news for an unbiased opinion
Get your facts right, all the BBC's UK content is paid for by the licence fee which includes all the digital channels they produce, the radio stations, local content and the online content.
I think just over 100 pounds a year is good value compared to the high monthly fees of Sky (100's of channels of which only a couple are any good).
The BBC is in a unique position, we've got a public broadcaster which means we're not bombarded with ads and they have an excellent (also ad free) website.
With Sky you pay per month and are still bombarded with ads.
e.g. when BBC2 used to have the Simpsons it was 20 minutes because they don't have the ads, with Sky it's 30 minutes.
It's also a small price to pay for having an organisation that has no commercial bias and as we've seen they're willing to criticise the government. I'd certainly rather trust the BBC rather than a commercial entity like Sky who is owned by News corp just like Fox.
The BBC as a public institution is bound by law and common custom to be representative of the people and to support/represent equality of religion/race/lifestyle/sexuality.
The British Tory or Conservative party is roughly analogous to Republicans in the US in that it holds "traditional values", many of which conflict with the modern egalitarian ethic of the BBC.
The British Right-wing, led primarily by tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail (politically somewhere to the right of Genghis Kahn..), has been leading an anti-BBC campaign for some time now as they don't want to see a state-run broadcaster "supporting" rights that they wish to abolish or diminish, such as equality of gay and straight relationships before the law, or equal attention in schools for minority faiths.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Somehow I doubt the members of the trust will be free from political influence... and being separated from the management of the day, do they not sound a little more like, say, OfBeeb*, than the 'cheerleaders' that the current Governers tend to be? I could see this being either good or bad, and based on my opinion of the current bastards ruining our country's good name at home and abroad, I'm inclined to be worried.
My tuppence is: just because they've called it a 'Trust' doesn't mean anything. Remember Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Always do the difficult bit in the title. Then everyone will assume that the content must fulfil it". Alternatively, think of Paxman: "Why is this lying lier lying to me?". Then you'll understand the Labour Party.
Justin.
* Note for non-UK readers. We name our regulatory bodies along these lines: OfGas, Office for the Gas industry. OfWat, Office for the Water industry. For some reason the Rail watchdog's office isn't called OfRail though...
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Hell, yeah. Whenever I see the alternative I realise just how good the BBC is. Sky is dire by comparison, and US TV is just unwatchable.
One thing people tend not to realise is that because the BBC has its own guaranteed source of income, they can't be put under pressure by their sponsors. There's an old story of a car company whose latest product had just been slammed by Top Gear, the BBC's excellent motoring programme (although less excellent than it was. Sigh). And when Top Gear doesn't like something, they're not subtle about it... the story goes is that the CEO watched the review, said, "I'll teach them to talk like that about us. Pull all our advertising from that channel. Now." And his secretary said, "Um..."
You would not believe what a difference this makes. During the last Gulf War I watched some CNN and MSNBC. It was embarrassing. A lot of it was cultural differences, but the blatant jingoism and emotionalism made, to me, a complete mockery of the whole concept of independent journalism ---I found it hard to accept what I was watching as being anything but outright propaganda.
(Incidentally, the BBC is not government funded, and their charter clearly makes them independent from government interference. If the government tries to pressure them, most BBC journalists shout 'Hurrah!' and it tends to make the news.)
I don't like the heavy-handed way the license fee is collected --- they use scare tactics a lot. "This man didn't pay his license fee. Now he's bankrupt, his wife has left him, his kids are drug addicted hookers, and we shot his dog. Don't let this happen to you." They also have a lot of trouble believing that some people don't have TVs. If they'd be nicer about it, I'd be much happier paying for it.
There's quite a good writeup on the BBC's journalism here.
A long time ago, the BBC was run by programme makers, and it was respected throughout the world for it's high quality programme making.
Then, around the end of the eighties, the accountants took over, and the quality ethics was jettisoned in favour of cost cutting.
Since then the BBC has slowly drifted towards the lower end of the market with programmes like Eastenders being shown 30 times a week, with an omnibus edition lasting all Sunday.
The government charter should be changed in favour of bringing the programme makers back.
Find funky gifts
Others have said it, but so shall I.
£104 to have the BBC in existance is well worth the money. Its reporting is superb, its comedy truly world-class and its drama often ground-breaking. I've lived and worked all around the world and there is no media organisation to compare with it in terms of breadth and honesty in its approach.
The way the BBC holds politics to account in the UK is unrivialed in any country. Tony Blair is AFRAID to go onto the BBC because of the grilling he will get. Many countries claim they have free-speech, and yet none actually challenge their leadership in the same way as the Beeb.
Blackadder, the Office, Little Britian, Newsnight, The Today Programme, Panorama etc etc etc.
Put it this way, in the UK we see the bodies of our soldiers being returned, we see the damage the suicide bombers do, and the damage that allied bombs do. Even Sky News (prop: R Murdoch) has to be unbiased and serious about the news, Fox News (prop: R Murdoch) is considered to be a comedy programme.
£104 to live in a country where Fox is a joke.... bargin.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
A lot of posts here, and so far nobody seems to have mentioned what I thought was the most encouraging part of the announcement, namely that the BBC has been told it is not to chase ratings but focus on quality programming.
Hopefully, this means that the BBC will keep turning out more of the kind of programmes that have made its name into a badge of quality and stop it getting caught up in the race-to-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that Sky and the other commercial channels seem to be in.
Now most people have a TV. The people who need TV most may be the poorest amongst us - Open University Students, parents, and carers, and so on. You can make a TV by putting a card in your computer. The TV detector vans do not work any longer (if they ever did, which I doubt). The licence costs more to collect then it is worth. The whole TV licence scheme is getting beyond its useful life. Basically, the only thing it has going for it is its long history.
If you can come up with a reliable alternative that can give the BBC a secure income that does not depend on central government or market forces, then we would love to hear about it. But coming up with a general way of making being nice finiancially rewarding would be a bit of a social breakthrough.
Not at all, they probably knew that it was 'unreliable', not that it was false.
It was terrible journalism. A single unsubstantiated source apparently made a specific false allegation. The reporter (Gilligan) went live on air with no notes, no corroboration and no evidence and stated that the Downing St press office and not 'intelligence' was the source of the dossier. The BBC deserved to be hung for that. Alistair Campbell did not draw up the dossier.
This is not to defend the war, I don't, but reporting unattributed unsubstantiated tittle tattle on the main opinion forming news program is awful, awful journalism. The reporter was stupid, but the editorial team and the management (who publicly defended their man before they'd even talked to him) were incompetent.
meanwhile there has been no investigation at all into why the Intelligence was so dismal and wrong. The same intelligence services will provide the justifications for house arrest that the govt wishes to introduce. This is the real scandal.