British Goverment to Reshape BBC Governance 587
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?)."
Oversight (Score:4, Interesting)
There goes the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
If it's not broken don't fix it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Licensing fee (Score:3, Interesting)
£104 ($180 ish?) a year just to watch TV
Re:F*ck the license fee! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why Isn't This On Their Website Then? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always found that the BBC presented fairly impartial reporting on most issues and didn't tend to get too centralised on particular countries or trends. I have BBC World at home and while it can be a bore at times listening to economics and politics in places I don't care about, at least I hear about it.
I had BBC World when I lived in the USA and its coverage during the September 11th attack and after was markedly different from the US channels, particularly two days out. I live in Madrid now and it's coverage of the train bombings on the 11th of March provided some clarity of view when all of the media channels here were reporting a more local feel.
I feel that anything that compromises their current model would compromise that impartiality - more control or looking for subscriptions would see the flavour of the news influenced: for the worst.
The BBC still reminds me of a time when most people who read newspapers were trying to better themselves and stay informed, and felt that said publications were a level to aspire to. As opposed to the vast proliferation of trash publications and sensationalist reporting which now murk those waters. I hope the BBC stays the way it is.
Right-wing pressure explains the Conservative view (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sure, George (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Why not just keep things as they are?! (Score:1, Interesting)
But getting back to the main point:
I don't mind the TV license - I mean, it funds some of the best quality channels out there. High quality public service broadcasting, as they say. Put adverts on BBC1 & 2, and I'd stop watching TV completely. I would continue listening to Radio1, 2 & 6Music - if they still exist after the BBC's restructuring.
Why resent paying for it? OK, Sky has (how many??) channels, but you have 15 minutes of adverts to every 45 of program. That's 25% of the airtime! A Sky package costs so much more than the license fee, and how many of all those available channels really show anything you'd ever watch? Don't most of us, (the average British population) stick with the first 6 channels available? (The 6th one, admittedly, being Sky One in my case.)
Re:i don't think anyone outside the UK gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ajr.org].
Re:Oversight (Score:3, Interesting)
Gone Downhill Already (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Licensing fee (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Told to IGNORE RATINGS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Nooo! (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't have much hope that they won't fuck it up.
Re:Oversight (Score:1, Interesting)
Fine in principle, shaky in practise. For a start they have to cosy up to the powers that be every ten years to renew their charter, just like this.
I watched the BBC's coverage of the gulf war and read about it in two major newspapers. Comparing the versions it's obvious they all did have a bias, span things, left out things, etc. It happens, we have to expect it.
Remember radio licences? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:If it's not broken don't fix it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:i don't think anyone outside the UK gets it. (Score:2, Interesting)
I too watch it because it has no commericals but to be honest they have 90% crap. (I mean how many hours a week do we need to see auctioning programs and yet once in a while we get a new episode of HIGNFY and nothing for a few months after. In fact wasn't Monday night meant to be comedy night on BBC2? That lasted for a few weeks.....My nurse says I should stop now.)
Ciao
What's A Yank To Do? (Score:2, Interesting)
TV Licence (Score:3, Interesting)
BBC (Score:2, Interesting)
Having said that standing still is not the best way to maintain excellence. The BBC does have undergo regular reviews (be they internal or externally imposed) in order to keep at the forefront of the media. Chances in the way oversight is performed definitely falls into this category.
Personally, I believe a form of licence fee is the only way to avoid wholesale chasing of ratings. I have no objection to paying for it. You could argue that I could continue to pay for high-quality programming from the private sector if the BBC were disbanded completely. However, I think the failure DRM and content encryption schemes over the years have shown us that excluding non-payers is very tricky indeed. I suggest that the free rider issue would rapidly sink any commercial paid-for service. I could very well be wrong, I haven't researched this particularly. It's just my opinion.
Re:what do you think? (Score:1, Interesting)
No, one journalist at the BBC made an unscripted remark on the BBC radio news 6 in the morning, saying that the Blair government sexed up the WMD threat. To cover up their lies and deception, the Blair people attacked BBC (who is known for their independence, and therefore is not affraid of actually asking critical questions about their government) using this one incident with this one journalist. The attack was based on the report by the journalist not to be accurat and to based on only one source. (How many accurate sources did the Blair people have for their 45-min claim????)
The source was revealed by the MOD (by loyal Blair people) to be the eminent weapons expert in the UK. The expert was forced to become a witness that testified that the journalist had not used the experts exact words about the WMD report when re-telling the story (unscripted) on the radio in that one news report (even though the expert admitted having the conversations with the journalist, where he had stated similar sentiments). The expert then went on and killed himself a few week later after all the media attention.
Blair was forced to have an inquery, but chose a judge that claired his government of any wrong-doing, while BBC got all the blame.
I don't know the moral of the story. We now know of course that the journalist (who was fired together with the head of BBC) told a totally accurat story, but that is old news. Too me it shows what a cynical bastard Blair really is.
Bout time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what do you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Firstly, the BBC isn't biased towards one "party" or right/left wing. I seem to remember in the past the BBC attacking the goverment in the past - in the 1980s, the 70s and soforth -- be the goverment either labour or conservative. The whole "oh, it's all left wing!" is nonsense. And how many TV companies do you know of that would make programs or have people speaking on programs critisizing their own tv channel? And - correct me if I'm wrong - but how many commerical channels carry a programme carrying children's news? And I mean a serious look at the news only put in less complex language, not the sort of thing you might have seen on 'the simpsons'.
I've actually seen both sides of the picture. I've watched US TV and by and large I found it unwatchable. Politics aside it was unwatchable by the sheer amount of heavy advertising. It is a pleasure and a joy to be able to watch the BBC, and again just putting politics aside it is good not to have to watch all those annoying TV ads (TV Spam?).
Even when (terrestial) commercial TV started in the UK there was some copying not by the BBC but by commercial TV copying some of the BBC's output (in a sense). Indeed one commercial TV company on its opening night in the 50s actually broadcast a tribute to the BBC!
I do agree though that BBC programming has slipped considerably over the years, but then again that seems to be the case for all television - in the UK at least (no thanks to Mr.Murdoch, ITV and even C4/5) there seems to be a "rush to the bottom" with regards to programme quality. It says something when ITV1's most informative programme is "TV's naughtiest moments"
By and large though I'm grateful for the BBC, and the license fee does go much further than you think. Several regional outlets all over the UK, 4 National TV channels, 5 national radio stations, local radio stations, an internet website and a worldwide radio serive (BBC WS). Not bad going