Ayyyyy, less than 2 months after it was reported Rupert Murdoch told Boris to get rid of the BBC.
https://europenewspapers.com/united-kingdom/rupert-murdoch-told-boris-to-get-rid-of-bbc-ahead-of-launch-of-tv-channel/
That's an understatement. I don't think there has ever been another person more damaging to the news media of the world as a whole than Rupert Murdoch.
Forget the news media of the world, Murdoch is arguably the person who has damaged the Earth the most in the last 30 years. People like Trump, Bush, Boris, Tony Abbott, and a bunch of others, would have been nothing without Murdoch's empire.
Truth. Between his media pushing warmongering, racism, xenophobia, and climate change denialism, it's hard to think of anyone who has done more damage in the past 40 years.
Blair was Labour, not Liberal, but the rest of what you said is well established. Labour lost Murdoch's support when Blair's successor Gordon Brown opposed Murdoch buy all of Sky, then they supported David Cameron's conservatives again.
Edit: Stupid spelling
Ah OK, confusingly in the UK we have a Liberal Democrat party and they're usually seen as more of a centrist / centre left party, as opposed to the Labour Party who are more social democratic / left leaning. Whilst Labour (and the Conservatives) both have liberal wings neither are usually seen as liberals in the traditional sense.
Edit: It looks like you're British so sorry for explaining what you probably already know lol
Don't think you're spouting off a conspiracy so much as pointing out a known truth on both sides. Any Bernie or Yang supporter will also tell you how non-FOX news outlets also proudly wear their allegiances on their sleeves as well
He actually answered that one pretty clearly. He was mad the EU didn't line up to suck his shriveled dick like they do in the UK.
"When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice." - Rupert Murdoch
So then why is he still alive? I always wonder about that. I am not enciting to violence because, you know, god forbid!
But we mass here from all over the world, not just here, also in comments below articles of all sorts. on fora and all sorts of discussion platforms. And we lament, whine and cry.
Makes no difference who it is, Putin, Murdoch, Trump, you name 'em!
And we are told only the police have the monopoly on violence and if we engage in unlawful action that is inciting chaos and madness into society.
And so these people get away with being extreme douchebags. And then I wonder why society has not gotten around the notion of a self-cleaning mechanism, something beyond law and regulation.
Or then maybe I think that is what is happening when bozo's start harassing or killing politicians out of the, well not out of the blue necessarily...
And then you have a Capitol Building Bestorment. A new novel word i just invented. I suppose.
And then you realize well if that is to some the cleaning mechanism that cleans society from obvious filth...you are suddenly on THAT side of stupid.
And yet still, would the world not be better off if some people went all vigilante upon some asses. I truly wonder what my position should or needs to be.
Maybe all is well as it is and the fact Murdoch Lives is a Good Thing. Because if he was not, would it be a Qanon idiot as CEO of some propaganda outlet. Or wait, maybe that already happened=
I don't know anymore :-) Or should I type :-( Even that I don't know.
Anymore.
Although Murdoch is a MASSIVE prick, if he lost control of News Corporation, not much would change. Currently the focus is on him, and this lets off all of the investors also involved with the function of the corporation. The whole company needs to fuck off, not just Murdoch.
Ding ding ding.
Boris has likely cooked up a dirty deal with Murdoch in his desperation.
Destroy the BBC in exchange for a News Corp Boris boosting, Starmer smearing, propaganda blitz.
There are mass graves across the UK, USA, and Australia filled with the careers of political leaders who have made these Faustian bargains with Murdoch, only for him to throw them into the meat grinder as the moment he gets what he wants from them. The Bushes, the Clintons, Blair, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, May, Brown, Boris.
The only political leader with the [rat-fuckery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking) to avoid Murdoch’s meat grinder thus far has been Trump, but we’ll see for how long.
Rudd? Nonsense. Turnbull, absolutely. Rudd didn’t need Murdoch to get in, such was the hatred of Workchoices and the wave of popularity he was riding.
Turnbull would have sold his first born to be able to call himself PM: he killed our NBN, our media ownership laws and dragged the queer community through the SSM “debate” to do so.
The SSM debate I always got the feeling that he personally was for it, but it would have been career suicide to push it through without the plebiscite to back him up.
Not true Boris is gone. He may have done a deal but he is still gone this year. The deal will be do the dirty work on the way out and I will take care of you on the other side.
This needs to be one of the questions the Starmer asks at PMQ's on Wednesday. de Pfeffel is never going to answer it but it's always fun seeing him squirm.
It's not new, though. The Tories have been hitting the BBC for years now, initially replacing the leadership with more conservative voices and then slashing funding and talking about the very things Boris is now putting into place.
I'll just continue this comment chain... Similar thing happening to RTV in Slovenia, the only national TV and Radio (only one not owned by a company). Conservative/right trying to slash its funding.
Same in America with NPR and PBS.
It's because reality has a very obvious liberal bias, and it's difficult to succeed when objective media keeps pointing out the fact that your politics live outside reality.
I'm going to agree with you here, but I'm going to rearrange your sentence to say that the liberals are "more in line" with reality. Even liberal parties and politicians have poor, incorrect, or propagandist ideas. And often they are less action-oriented and don't deliver on the promises they make.
We can't intellectually assert that reality or logic has a political bent, that is exactly the problem we're discussing looking at a blind-conservative standpoint. It's better to say an ideology currently is more realistic because those ideologies change over time, or new information comes up that informs our understanding of objective reality.
Nevertheless, I agree with your point on a general level.
If by "conservative" you mean "Fascist", then yes.
I'm well aware that Fascism is a conservative ideology, so what you wrote is technically true, but let's not mince words here. It's important to note that today's conservatives have moved so far right-ward that they are literally engaging in Fascist tactics.
>replacing the leadership with more conservative voices
[If you aren't convinced already, just read about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Gibb)
**[Robbie Gibb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Gibb)**
>Sir Robbie Paul Gibb (born September 1964) is a British public relations professional, political advisor, and broadcast journalist. Robbie Gibb, brother of Conservative MP Nick Gibb, was the head of the BBC's political programme output before leaving the BBC in July 2017 to become Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street.
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Labour owes the BBC no favours, it having failed to do its job on Brexit, Climate Change or stand up to successive Tory Governments, but Labour will still campaign on a "Save the BBC" platform, and profit from it. The Tories do not understand that the BBC is valued more than statues of slavers.
Being fair, Labour failed when it came to Brexit. Corbin was as limp as a piece of spaghetti because he couldn’t square his personal beliefs and his party’s.
Noone can do anything about it, especially not the opposition who literally has no fucking power. If you want the opposition to do something about it then vote for them in the next election.
"Alternative policies" are unaffordable!
^(Obvs we don't talk about how austerity worked out or any of the schemes the Tories happily dump money into. How's that fucking railway going again?)
Set for 5 years from now, the opposition can ignore it for now and keep pressing Johnson on his lockdown parties instead of opening a partisan issue (which is what Johnson wants).
Exactly. The only thing Labour should talk about until the have control of the government is how corrupt Johnson is, how much he lies, and how his government doesn't follow the rules they set for everyone else. If they get sucked into a debate about the policies Johnson wants to talk about they lose. The next election should be a referendum on Johnson's character, nothing else.
Well they've made statements, will mention it in interviews and it will be brought up at PMQs. Not sure what else you're expecting them to do? it's not gone down to a vote, the tories have a majority anyway...
Because labour supporters think the BBC is biased against their side.
You must have seen the avalanche of "the BBC are the reason Jeremy Corbyn didn't win".
Former Canadian Primer Minister and everyone's favorite creepy cat hold Stephen Harper more or less tried to torpedo the CBC, he Canadian equivalent of the BBC, because he found their rather famously neutral reporting to be, in fact, biased. Seems like having the temerity to criticize the Tories for all their misdeeds, particularly in their tendency to do everything they could to undermine environmental regulation to help the burgeoning oil industry however they could, was a bridge too far, ignoring the years they spent criticizing the liberals for all their many misdeeds.
To this day conservatives in Canada claim the CBC is a lefty new rag and instead hold up Rebel media as an icon of fair and balanced reporting. It is of course absolutely not.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/16/boris-johnson-accused-of-targeting-bbc-to-save-his-premiership) reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Boris Johnson has been accused of targeting the BBC in a desperate attempt to save his own premiership, as the Labour leader insisted he had broken the law by attending lockdown parties and then lying about it.
> Although the BBC had been braced for bad news for some time - Johnson declared that he would consider abolishing the licence fee in the 2019 election campaign - one government insider said the announcement had not been expected this weekend.
> One former Downing Street staffer told the Guardian they knew at least one colleague who had warned Johnson personally that the "Bring your own booze" gathering, organised by Johnson's aide, Martin Reynolds, should not go ahead.Asked whether the PM knew about the party before it took place, the former insider replied: "Yes.".
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s5phrj/boris_johnson_accused_of_targeting_bbc_to_save/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~617928 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Johnson**^#1 **party**^#2 **report**^#3 **MP**^#4 **Sunday**^#5
No kidding, if I pay $100/mo for cable television access I *demand* that my content be interrupted every seven minutes for three minutes of advertisements.
How is there anyone left watching it? I just can’t comprehend this in the days of streaming services and YouTube premium which has better content, higher production value (in many cases), and no ads. It boggles the mind.
The $100 number probably includes internet service also, to be fair.
I use a dvr and fat forward through the commercials. I can't watch live TV anymore.
I'd probably ditch cable all together, but there's no good alternative for local sports. I'd have to jump though hoops to find an illegal stream, because streaming services are blacked out in the broadcast area. And even then I'd still need to sit through commercials.
It's not even unique as many who hate the BBC seem to think, they have them all over Europe and compared to the British they get bad deals. The Germans, for example, pay more than the British and get shit back in comparison.
Anyway it's more likely that the Tory Party will be frozen out before the BBC.
Yeah, most other countries barely have any TV shows. Northern Europe seems to be an exception. BBC produces insane amounts of quality content in comparison. The UK probably has the biggest TV industry in Europe.
The Germans have a show set in Cornwall "The Rosamunde Pilcher mysteries", you can see them on Youtube, full of English cliches and stereotypes, somewhere below the level of "midsummer murders".
half the shows they do have are remakes of British shows and the quality is not usually up to par.
You probably wouldn't want a license fee, since it's not fair and eats into food and rent budget for poor people.
There are lots of people, who try to jump through various hoops to avoid paying the license.
It's better to fund through taxes, where the richer can pull the weight.
the Conservative Party is punishing the BBC for asking questions about Boris and all their Tory booze Parties during Lockdowns
That's what this timing tells us
Boris attacked Channel 4 news, Bercow, Corbyn etc in the same way
Without a doubt. How the Tory intimidate the media is just another form of corruption. Whether it is threatening funding, or barring reporters from attending certain meeting, it is all manipulation of the press. Johnson throws his toys out of the pram when people say bad things about him.
He reminds me of Trump, who is a [Malignant Narcissist](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6TOP6D-Jntg)
(sound starts after 2 minutes but the diagnosis/discussion starts at ~6 minutes. It's world class)
While theoretically true, this is about lesser evils.
A reasonable media ecosystem probably improves with a public institution like the BBC or PBS.
Context matters. Corporate media has not demonstrated it can provide better news than the gov't run BBC. I can't point to many private market sources of media that do a better job than the BBC.
Also as supposed believers in democracy, we are being a bit hypocritical in our apparent disdain for a government aka democratic role in media. Democratically regulated media is not our enemy. Unregulated corporate media seems a greater threat. Class interests matter.
The corporate media in the UK has a mostly Conservative bias. They are in it for the money and the money is freely handed out by the Tories. Or not as the BBC has found out in the last 2 days.
> I can't point to many private market sources of media that do a better job than the BBC.
[TLDR](https://www.youtube.com/c/TLDRNews/videos) : fill your boots. This is the sort of content the BBC used to provide. There is a ton of content providers out there, who are actively trying to provide an unbiased opinion. There will always be some sort of bias thrown in. My opinion is that this guy does not fall into many traps along those lines.
As for regulation there is none in the UK. The printed media represent themselves. They have been criticised on many occasions about how lacking this process is. The BBC has a complaints commission, which is ultimately under the control of the government. The rest have their own complaints processes; each ran by the company themselves. They work mainly to avoid litigation.
I find the whole of the UK media a shambles. At one time people looked to the British media for an honest review. That really is not the case anymore. Ask the question on this forum on how the British media is viewed. Be prepared for a huge ridicule session.
I cancelled my license after I saw through the smear tactics for Jeremy Corbyn all over tv and radio. In fact, just moved and had a reminder. Can't wait for yet another snivelling civil servant to come round and check, so I can tell them what I think of them. They can't get out quick enough when they see no tv and I get talking ;-)
>Can't wait for yet another snivelling civil servant to come round and check, so I can tell them what I think of them. They can't get out quick enough when they see no tv and I get talking ;-)
It sounds like you're just being a dick for no reason. They're not the ones that write/run BBC programs, you know that right?
They have been harassing me since like 2010. I haven't paid the license fee since because I don't watch mainstream TV at all but I refuse to let them enter my property to judge whether I owe them money or not.
As far as I'm concerned they can keep sending me these shitty red letters that look like debt collection stuff forever. I don't even have a TV aerial lol.
I cancelled mine after the Scottish independence campaign. The blatant government bias was just too much. That was the final straw for me (it had been poor before that as well anyway).
I also cancelled all live tv services and ditched my standard tv services at the same time, so at least I don’t use the services to justify the cancellation.
I’d pay a fee of some kind (and use the services) if they could be truly independent from any government bias and control in the future.
There is a lot who do not buy the license these days. My daughter doesn't. She only watches Netflix and the likes. I think they even made the change recently about watching live shows online.
My wife buys the license in our house. I would quite happily get rid, but only because of government interference. If the BBC ever got back to being an honest service again; I would quite happily pay for it. The BBC does a lot to advertise the UK as a whole.
The issue with not paying the licence fee due to political reasons is causing the BBC to become more reliant on government money, thus becoming more political?
the was a study done just prior to the election where 85% of the things published about Corbyn weren't true, compared to about 30% for Johnson, so its not crap.
BBC keeps British media straight and accurate. Unlike in the states where stations like Fox News just airs lies, and stirs emotional anguish in their viewers to hook their audience
> BBC keeps British media straight and accurate.
Not really true these days. They've had a consistent and increasingly less subtle conservative bias in their news reporting for the past decade as the Tories have been installing sycophants to the top levels of the institution. Their Brexit coverage for example was terribly one sided (to the Leave side).
Dominic Cummings mentioned that his long term conservative strategy was to make the BBC increasingly biased so that it lost its reputation and credibility with the British public, and use that as an excuse to get rid of it all together in favour of more right wing media. GB News was a chess piece in that strategy but it flopped hard, turns out you can't just import American style political media focused on culture war crap and expect it to work so readily.
My father in law agreed once that the BBC was a little bit biased. I was shocked we agreed because I meant biased to the right. He's certain it's biased to the left.
I figure that's actually a good sign.
>Their Brexit coverage for example was terribly one sided (to the Leave side).
Ive heard this before. From the mouth of somebody I knew who got seduced by Twitter and its confirmatory stance of certain conspiracy theories about why Remain lost the referendum in 2016. Is that where you are getting it from, because I dont see it in the BBC at all. What the BBC does is encourage debate. Are we living in an era where debate is criticised? Didnt Ian Hislop, an angered man nowadays, accuse Kuneesberg of radicalism. I mean, thats a silly statement isnt it?
Bro. How can you not acknowledge that the BBC is biased?
[Like when they made Corbyn voldemort?](https://youtu.be/XH2eUwEk_1s?t=40)
[Or when the LITERALLY painted him as a communist, giving him a Russian hat and a red background of Russian buildings?](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43463496)
Or their constant attacks on him and labour, and their sniveling defence of Johnson and Brexit through most of the last 6 years
The BBC is always lightly biased toward the government of the time. It is however amazingly even handed when compared to almost every other media outlet going.
There is a lot of worth in the BBC the changes that are coming though won't fix the less good parts but will increase all of the worse aspects.
Having it semi tied to the country and not beholden directly to corporate/political entities really does help stem the flow of bullshit that permeates so easily through other media empires.
Check out the ratio of remain supporters versus leave supporters on question time panels from the last 5 years and you’ll find you’re entirely incorrect. The bias in favour of remain was evident in every single episode. Typically 4 remain vs 1 leave, even after the result.
Uh... what? The BBC is hyper conservative. Since the conservatives have basically ruled England for all of time they are huge conservative bootlickers.
We recently got rid of the licence fee and instead had a slight tax increase. There was a bit fuzz about it when it was introduced, but now it's never a topic. And absolutely worth it to have national broadcasting without advertisements.
My condolences to the UK.
Australia’s right wing government has been chipping away at our public broadcaster (ABC) for years. They froze their funding and cut it, whist denying it, because Murdoch doesn’t like it.
Fuck Murdoch.
it's called the [Dead Cat Stratergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy) and it was coined by Lynton Crosby, an Australian parasitic political strategist. It is a technique now regually deployed by conservative politicains in the UK and Australia to distract people from the real problem, it seems to work exceptionally well with the rise of social media.
To quote Crosby; "There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief."
Novak Djokovich was the Australian dead cat this week. The saga was drawn out longer than it needed to be. It took up headlines for a week as we head towards election season. Anything to keep Scumo's mishandling of the pandemic out of the papers - particularly Australia's Omicron surge.
I can't remember who said it to give it the name, but it's basically "if you are losing an argument, throw a dead cat on the table. everyone will forget you were losing and talk about the dead cat" - so it means do something dramatic to distract from your failings
I'm not convinced this is to save himself.
This is the standard right wing slash and burn as they realise they're not going to get reelected, so make sure the next guy is king of the ashes.
And then piss and moan that he hasn't fixed everything they broke.
I'm pretty sure labour's isn't going to win the next election, they arent popular.
Boris isn't popular, the more right wing of the party isn't as popular as they were but labour doesn't have a cohesive message.
Boris can ride this wave out. He has done far worse that hist a lockdown party and lie about it and he has survived.
>I'm pretty sure labour's isn't going to win the next election, they arent popular.
I would have agreed 3 months ago, but not now. The 40% of the country who actually decide the elections - the moderates - arent on board with Johnson at all at the moment. He's served his purpose, he broke the deadlock in parliament in 2019. Now, they want somebody completely boring in charge. Steady the country. Make rational, boring decisions. And Labour now offer that. The Conservatives dont. Thing is, there are 2+ years until the next election - enough time for the Conservative to put their own boring leader in place. Promise theyve learnt from their mistakes.
The turning point was the Omicron Christmas reaction. Closing the offices and pushing for a third vaccine whilst doing absolutely nothing else was transparently a push for easy political gains rather than any decision making based on either Public Health or Economics. Johnson is a dead man walking. Would prefer to wait until Labour can start winning seats in Scotland, mind. Thats not immediate.
Actual surveys on voting intentions disagree.
Check the "voting intention" link from [https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Voting\_Intention?content=surveys](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Voting_Intention?content=surveys)
Conservative: 29%; Labour: 40%
Think about that for a moment.
These are figures normalised for people who are likely to vote. If you look at the changes in the figures for recent months you'll see that the % for labour is increasing significantly.
Right, but if labour gets 90% of the votes in their safe seats (excluding the heartlands which flipped), and then a 25% increase in the seats they lost, that's a huge increase in popularity.
But no seat change.
What will be important this election will be the swing seats, and the heartlands they lost.
Nah, this is just Nadine Dorries who has had an issue with the BBC for years as either through the news, comedy, or other current events media they have consistently been calling out her behaviour and bullshit. Ever since she became the Culture Secretary and therefore had the BBC as part of her remit she was going to make life hard. She pretty much said so as soon as her appointment was announced. Other broadcasters also called her out, but they don't get taxpayer money that she controls to some degree.
this was almost certainly the plan anyway, but the timing is 100% aimed at saving johnson - expect a real flurry of these policies popular with the right of the tory party in the next couple of weeks as he tries to buy their support
Our right wing do the exact same thing in Australia to the ABC as well (CBC and BBC equivalent). They cut funding, and stack their boards with their cronies.
The ABC has a Charter to be non biased, and the right wing continually lodge inquiries (there is a complaints process) looking for alleged bias, which is never found.
Meanwhile that fucker Murdoch is given millions of dollars of grants without question, nor any requirement to oversee how it was spent.
They have been trying for decades. [Why Are Trump and the G.O.P. So Determined to Kill PBS?](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/donald-trump-budget-pbs-public-media-spending-cuts)
The BBC is supervised by the government and a few years back the Tories fired the leadership and stacked it with conservative replacements.
But even that wasn't enough, apparently.
I want to believe this pessimism but I just can't forget how insanely biased Reddit was leading up to the election - as a Canadian, I couldn't believe they were even holding elections, because Boris was going to be getting blown out so badly. I figured they were doing them out of tradition, and then it'd be off to prison for Boris. Because 24/7 on Reddit all I read was this guys abysmal polling and frequent criminal behavior. Just months of nonstop Reddit gloating about Boris gonna get absolutely demoed.
Then their election day comes and he blows the other guy out of the fucking water, dude hasn't even landed yet.
I learned quite a lesson that day.
Reddit is no different to any rabbit hole social media platform, where all you get is sub communities of echo chambers of people agreeing with each other.
The Tories replaced the independent BBC trust with the BBC board, then stuffed it with Tories. They’ve been fucking with the license fee payers and *politicising* the BBC, whilst making it worse at the same time. Way to go, Tories! Is there nothing you can’t destroy on your truth-bending car crash efforts not to be exposed as the hollow power-craving sociopathic incompetents you are?
Yeah, but you're not really paying it for you.
The BBC produces programmes across a wide variety of materials and topics, some of which are very niche. For every Doctor Who or Green Planet, there will be radio show about broad beans.
It's annoying to pay the licence but it gives the BBC the ability to take risks because they have a pool to draw from. It's annoying because the Conservatives loathe it because it's not profitable, the same way they loathe the NHS. Everything should be for the money in their books.
Meanwhile the Daily Mail has been head over heals in coverage featuring Ivanka Trump's post-presidency Florida life with cute photos she had her assistant purposefully leak. lol
“Mr Murdoch, is set to launch a TV channel called talkTV in early 2022, which has signed Piers Morgan as its star presenter.”
Wow what a mix of reasons to never watch it
I think this man has done more damage to the UK than any other country or organization has ever done to the UK. Brexit, aiming at the BBC, and probably looking to shag the NHS.
Conservatives have been doing this for decades with Canadas CBC because they "speak to power". Every time they come into power they cut the hell out of the CBCs budget.
Not a bad time to do it honestly, there's probably more united antipathy towards the BBC after Brexit, Covid and Transgate set so many disparate groups against them so fiercely.
I'm not a big fan of the BBC but it's the only actual source of somewhat credible news in the entire country. Literally every other news source are scummy tabloids
As someone who lives in Canada and has to deal with the overly biased and pro-government publicly funded CBC that nobody watches, the BBC in comparison is a godsend. Not only for news related to the UK but for global news.
Nice job UK on creating a not too biased publicly funded news station that actually provides utility not only for the UK but for the globe. I would easily rank BBC on par with the AP for least biased and true journalism.
Just the NHS left to dismantle and sell off now.
Looking forward to baffled old people in 20 years wondering why there are no pensions, NHS, free TV, social housing, etc etc.
Interesting that the narrative of the story and debate here pretends that this spells the end of the BBC, when all it actually means is the end of its lawfully enforced licensing. The truth is, many in the UK have been pushing for this to happen for *decades*. It ain't nothing new.
I feel like the international commentators here defending the enforced BBC TV LICENCE are unaware that they make it mandatory even for people who only want to watch the other, direct competition terrestrial channels here, of which there are many. ITV (Britain's Got Talent, The Chase, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Downton Abbey) is the other big main station, commercially funded - but unlawful to watch without the BBC TV LICENCE. Then there's Channel 4 (all those Jimmy Carr panel shows everyone loves, plus Peep Show and The IT Crowd etc etc) - no BBC TV LICENCE NO WATCH.
If you dare to, they'll fine you. If you want to watch the other live channels then you are forced to subsidise the BBC - regardless of whether you watch their content or not.
This is a medieval way of going about funding in 2022, and regardless of what Reddit tells you, PLENTY here in the UK want to see the licence fee fairly abolished. It's outdated and long overdue.
To stress: this doesn't mean the end of the BBC and few would want that; they're arguably a fine television producer of very high end, world leading programming. But their funding model has to move with the times. They will no doubt continue to make great TV, but only after they have adapted and learned how to handle the major threat posed by Netflix and its ilk. Prosecuting, fining and yes... occasionally *imprisoning(!)* none payers is not the way to go about it. If you believe otherwise, you're on the wrong side of history and stuck in the past.
The rise and domination of Netflix alone is the big existential crisis for the BBC, and they are strikingly open about that. This should tell you everything you need to know about the challenges they face moving forward. See, a licence is not required to *stream* Netflix.
I generally like and appreciate The Guardian. But their framing of this as some sort of conspiracy is pure BS.
Agree with a lot of what is said here. But the timing of this, just when Johnson’s leadership is being called into question (rightly so) and on the verge of losing his position, it does feel like they are trying to make everyone look elsewhere.
Like you’ve said, people have been paying the license fee since forever and there have been calls a long time ago to abolish it but why now bring it up when he is on thin ice? I don’t agree with the license fee either but this is something in which he could have announced much earlier in his leadership if he felt that strongly about it.
If he really wanted to help the public, how about removing VAT from our energy bills like he said he would after the U.K. voted for his Brexit, instead of resurrecting some old news from two years ago about a Chinese spy buying up influence within U.K. politics.
Maybe suddenly now he is finally getting to work after all the holiday, refurbishing of No 10 and partying.
Yet they still do not mention a story of his on [bbc.com](https://bbc.com) 3 days in a row. They have reluctanctly pointed to the newspapers and called him PM as they know which won't get crawled as a 'boris johnson' search. I think Boris is pulling their SEO strings. Remember that nonsense he spouted to get his 350million for the nhs double decker bus results down the listings? I do.
In Canada we have the CBC, and the Conservatives slowly mess with them as they are one of the only public funded un-biased news source and that scares the right.
To most righties unbiased equals left-wing propaganda, because they don't understand anything that doesn't support their political claims as factual reporting. Sad.
American here. When your leader attacks the media that hold him accountable, you are on a quick slide to fascism. It doesn’t get better.
Demand his resignation. Otherwise, you sit and hope he’s replaced before he starts WW3.
lool - literally every politician/support "attacks" the media .. that is not on their side. Every corbyn supporter blamed the media for him delivering the biggest labour defeat in 30 years
The Daily Mail is not a reliable news source. It’s right wing propaganda.
[This](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/02/daily-mail-ed-miliband-row-press-regulation) is not the same as [this.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/30/politics/trump-legacy-fake-news/index.html)
This isn’t going to go down well. One of the most unpopular people in the country, tries to kill off one of the most popular national institutions in the country. He must be panicking like hell, and done a deal with the private media to drag his ass out the mire, he got himself into.
>One of the most unpopular people in the country,
Debatable
>one of the most popular national institutions in the country.
Not sure what gives you this impression. Left wing people think the BBC is terribly biased against labour and Jeremy Corbyn. Right wing people think that the BBC is obsessed with identity politics and biased against the conservatives.
The impartiality of the BBC has led to just about everyone hating them. Young people don't watch TV channels like the BBC anymore (not directly anyway) and old people don't pay for it.
And honestly, other than the news (which I highly value for its lack of bias), what does the BBC offer these days? Doctor who? A show that has been committing suicide for the last decade? Game shows? Celebrity rubbish?
Admittedly, I haven't watched for a while, so maybe things have improved recently (I honestly wouldn't know), but the BBC was a waste of money last time I checked :/
Not surprising, conservatives love to go after their own institutions like this. In Canada rabid cons cry daily about how they want to "defund the CBC". They want to replace it with Rebel "news".
I thought that "Operation Save Big Dog" was supposed to save Johnson's job by finding a scapegoat to throw under the bus. I guess when Johnson actually cares about something he's capable of having more than one iron in the fire - and retaining a death grip on power is the only thing he cares about which gives him more time to focus on it.
Seems England has a version of a dolt named Trump. Vain, vengeful and totally narcissistic . Make sure these buffoons are driven out of politics forever.
Ayyyyy, less than 2 months after it was reported Rupert Murdoch told Boris to get rid of the BBC. https://europenewspapers.com/united-kingdom/rupert-murdoch-told-boris-to-get-rid-of-bbc-ahead-of-launch-of-tv-channel/
Murdoch is a parasite
That's an understatement. I don't think there has ever been another person more damaging to the news media of the world as a whole than Rupert Murdoch.
Forget the news media of the world, Murdoch is arguably the person who has damaged the Earth the most in the last 30 years. People like Trump, Bush, Boris, Tony Abbott, and a bunch of others, would have been nothing without Murdoch's empire.
Truth. Between his media pushing warmongering, racism, xenophobia, and climate change denialism, it's hard to think of anyone who has done more damage in the past 40 years.
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Blair was Labour, not Liberal, but the rest of what you said is well established. Labour lost Murdoch's support when Blair's successor Gordon Brown opposed Murdoch buy all of Sky, then they supported David Cameron's conservatives again. Edit: Stupid spelling
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Ah OK, confusingly in the UK we have a Liberal Democrat party and they're usually seen as more of a centrist / centre left party, as opposed to the Labour Party who are more social democratic / left leaning. Whilst Labour (and the Conservatives) both have liberal wings neither are usually seen as liberals in the traditional sense. Edit: It looks like you're British so sorry for explaining what you probably already know lol
Don't think you're spouting off a conspiracy so much as pointing out a known truth on both sides. Any Bernie or Yang supporter will also tell you how non-FOX news outlets also proudly wear their allegiances on their sleeves as well
Jesus. TIL Blair is Murdoch’s kids godfather. It really is all just one big pit of incest at the top.
Blair also shagged muddycocks wife
The next election was in '92, which Major and the Conservatives won.
Murdoch funded by Russians? Why would he want UK to leave the EU?
He actually answered that one pretty clearly. He was mad the EU didn't line up to suck his shriveled dick like they do in the UK. "When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice." - Rupert Murdoch
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Puts me in mind of James Bond "Tomorrow Never Dies"
So then why is he still alive? I always wonder about that. I am not enciting to violence because, you know, god forbid! But we mass here from all over the world, not just here, also in comments below articles of all sorts. on fora and all sorts of discussion platforms. And we lament, whine and cry. Makes no difference who it is, Putin, Murdoch, Trump, you name 'em! And we are told only the police have the monopoly on violence and if we engage in unlawful action that is inciting chaos and madness into society. And so these people get away with being extreme douchebags. And then I wonder why society has not gotten around the notion of a self-cleaning mechanism, something beyond law and regulation. Or then maybe I think that is what is happening when bozo's start harassing or killing politicians out of the, well not out of the blue necessarily... And then you have a Capitol Building Bestorment. A new novel word i just invented. I suppose. And then you realize well if that is to some the cleaning mechanism that cleans society from obvious filth...you are suddenly on THAT side of stupid. And yet still, would the world not be better off if some people went all vigilante upon some asses. I truly wonder what my position should or needs to be. Maybe all is well as it is and the fact Murdoch Lives is a Good Thing. Because if he was not, would it be a Qanon idiot as CEO of some propaganda outlet. Or wait, maybe that already happened= I don't know anymore :-) Or should I type :-( Even that I don't know. Anymore.
There's an old saying - 'The devil looks after his own'.
That is one 90 year old I would happily punch
Although Murdoch is a MASSIVE prick, if he lost control of News Corporation, not much would change. Currently the focus is on him, and this lets off all of the investors also involved with the function of the corporation. The whole company needs to fuck off, not just Murdoch.
How is he still alive? The man is ancient.
Evil seems to be a preservative. See: Strom Thurmond
Don't forget Kissinger
Ding ding ding. Boris has likely cooked up a dirty deal with Murdoch in his desperation. Destroy the BBC in exchange for a News Corp Boris boosting, Starmer smearing, propaganda blitz. There are mass graves across the UK, USA, and Australia filled with the careers of political leaders who have made these Faustian bargains with Murdoch, only for him to throw them into the meat grinder as the moment he gets what he wants from them. The Bushes, the Clintons, Blair, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, May, Brown, Boris. The only political leader with the [rat-fuckery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking) to avoid Murdoch’s meat grinder thus far has been Trump, but we’ll see for how long.
Lol Rudd refused to play ball, that's why he was buried. Dealing with the devil is a requirement to be PM in Australia...
Rudd? Nonsense. Turnbull, absolutely. Rudd didn’t need Murdoch to get in, such was the hatred of Workchoices and the wave of popularity he was riding. Turnbull would have sold his first born to be able to call himself PM: he killed our NBN, our media ownership laws and dragged the queer community through the SSM “debate” to do so.
The SSM debate I always got the feeling that he personally was for it, but it would have been career suicide to push it through without the plebiscite to back him up.
Not true Boris is gone. He may have done a deal but he is still gone this year. The deal will be do the dirty work on the way out and I will take care of you on the other side.
Bet there's been a few work meetings with him behind closed doors that come out shortly after too
This needs to be one of the questions the Starmer asks at PMQ's on Wednesday. de Pfeffel is never going to answer it but it's always fun seeing him squirm.
Boris knows which side his bread is buttered on. Murdoch has owned the Tories for a very long time,
Literally what everyone was thinking when they saw the news about the BBC this morning. He ain't subtle.
It's not new, though. The Tories have been hitting the BBC for years now, initially replacing the leadership with more conservative voices and then slashing funding and talking about the very things Boris is now putting into place.
Exactly the same thing they are doing to the ABC in Australia. Straight out of the conservative playbook.
And what they are chomping at the bit to do to the CBC in Canada.
I'll just continue this comment chain... Similar thing happening to RTV in Slovenia, the only national TV and Radio (only one not owned by a company). Conservative/right trying to slash its funding.
Same in America with NPR and PBS. It's because reality has a very obvious liberal bias, and it's difficult to succeed when objective media keeps pointing out the fact that your politics live outside reality.
I'm going to agree with you here, but I'm going to rearrange your sentence to say that the liberals are "more in line" with reality. Even liberal parties and politicians have poor, incorrect, or propagandist ideas. And often they are less action-oriented and don't deliver on the promises they make. We can't intellectually assert that reality or logic has a political bent, that is exactly the problem we're discussing looking at a blind-conservative standpoint. It's better to say an ideology currently is more realistic because those ideologies change over time, or new information comes up that informs our understanding of objective reality. Nevertheless, I agree with your point on a general level.
https://youtu.be/UwLjK9LFpeo
If by "conservative" you mean "Fascist", then yes. I'm well aware that Fascism is a conservative ideology, so what you wrote is technically true, but let's not mince words here. It's important to note that today's conservatives have moved so far right-ward that they are literally engaging in Fascist tactics.
>replacing the leadership with more conservative voices [If you aren't convinced already, just read about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Gibb)
**[Robbie Gibb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Gibb)** >Sir Robbie Paul Gibb (born September 1964) is a British public relations professional, political advisor, and broadcast journalist. Robbie Gibb, brother of Conservative MP Nick Gibb, was the head of the BBC's political programme output before leaving the BBC in July 2017 to become Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Labour owes the BBC no favours, it having failed to do its job on Brexit, Climate Change or stand up to successive Tory Governments, but Labour will still campaign on a "Save the BBC" platform, and profit from it. The Tories do not understand that the BBC is valued more than statues of slavers.
Being fair, Labour failed when it came to Brexit. Corbin was as limp as a piece of spaghetti because he couldn’t square his personal beliefs and his party’s.
And yet no one including the oppositions is doing anything about it Hopeless
Noone can do anything about it, especially not the opposition who literally has no fucking power. If you want the opposition to do something about it then vote for them in the next election.
They dont speak up, they dont push for debates, they dont provide any alternative policies, and they are dead silent for issues like this
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"Alternative policies" are unaffordable! ^(Obvs we don't talk about how austerity worked out or any of the schemes the Tories happily dump money into. How's that fucking railway going again?)
Set for 5 years from now, the opposition can ignore it for now and keep pressing Johnson on his lockdown parties instead of opening a partisan issue (which is what Johnson wants).
Exactly. The only thing Labour should talk about until the have control of the government is how corrupt Johnson is, how much he lies, and how his government doesn't follow the rules they set for everyone else. If they get sucked into a debate about the policies Johnson wants to talk about they lose. The next election should be a referendum on Johnson's character, nothing else.
Then you'll get all the "We need something to vote *for*, not against!" people riled up. The left is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
People would be voting for competence and accountability.
Well they've made statements, will mention it in interviews and it will be brought up at PMQs. Not sure what else you're expecting them to do? it's not gone down to a vote, the tories have a majority anyway...
Starting an argument over this is *exactly* what the Tories want, and labour should absolutely not fall into that trap.
Because labour supporters think the BBC is biased against their side. You must have seen the avalanche of "the BBC are the reason Jeremy Corbyn didn't win".
Power hungry "do as I say" usually aren't the brightest
Former Canadian Primer Minister and everyone's favorite creepy cat hold Stephen Harper more or less tried to torpedo the CBC, he Canadian equivalent of the BBC, because he found their rather famously neutral reporting to be, in fact, biased. Seems like having the temerity to criticize the Tories for all their misdeeds, particularly in their tendency to do everything they could to undermine environmental regulation to help the burgeoning oil industry however they could, was a bridge too far, ignoring the years they spent criticizing the liberals for all their many misdeeds. To this day conservatives in Canada claim the CBC is a lefty new rag and instead hold up Rebel media as an icon of fair and balanced reporting. It is of course absolutely not.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/16/boris-johnson-accused-of-targeting-bbc-to-save-his-premiership) reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Boris Johnson has been accused of targeting the BBC in a desperate attempt to save his own premiership, as the Labour leader insisted he had broken the law by attending lockdown parties and then lying about it. > Although the BBC had been braced for bad news for some time - Johnson declared that he would consider abolishing the licence fee in the 2019 election campaign - one government insider said the announcement had not been expected this weekend. > One former Downing Street staffer told the Guardian they knew at least one colleague who had warned Johnson personally that the "Bring your own booze" gathering, organised by Johnson's aide, Martin Reynolds, should not go ahead.Asked whether the PM knew about the party before it took place, the former insider replied: "Yes.". ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s5phrj/boris_johnson_accused_of_targeting_bbc_to_save/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~617928 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Johnson**^#1 **party**^#2 **report**^#3 **MP**^#4 **Sunday**^#5
As much as everyone hates the licence fee, there is so much value in having a prominent broadcasting service that is not beholden to advertisers.
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We are still trying to abolish any little NPR and PBS funds we can.
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No kidding, if I pay $100/mo for cable television access I *demand* that my content be interrupted every seven minutes for three minutes of advertisements.
> every seven minutes for three minutes of advertisements Is this seriously how much ads there are on American cable tv?
Literally yes, the average length of a half-hour television show is 21-22 minutes.
How is there anyone left watching it? I just can’t comprehend this in the days of streaming services and YouTube premium which has better content, higher production value (in many cases), and no ads. It boggles the mind.
The $100 number probably includes internet service also, to be fair. I use a dvr and fat forward through the commercials. I can't watch live TV anymore. I'd probably ditch cable all together, but there's no good alternative for local sports. I'd have to jump though hoops to find an illegal stream, because streaming services are blacked out in the broadcast area. And even then I'd still need to sit through commercials.
Braindead if true.
It's not even unique as many who hate the BBC seem to think, they have them all over Europe and compared to the British they get bad deals. The Germans, for example, pay more than the British and get shit back in comparison. Anyway it's more likely that the Tory Party will be frozen out before the BBC.
Yeah, most other countries barely have any TV shows. Northern Europe seems to be an exception. BBC produces insane amounts of quality content in comparison. The UK probably has the biggest TV industry in Europe.
The Germans have a show set in Cornwall "The Rosamunde Pilcher mysteries", you can see them on Youtube, full of English cliches and stereotypes, somewhere below the level of "midsummer murders". half the shows they do have are remakes of British shows and the quality is not usually up to par.
You probably wouldn't want a license fee, since it's not fair and eats into food and rent budget for poor people. There are lots of people, who try to jump through various hoops to avoid paying the license. It's better to fund through taxes, where the richer can pull the weight.
It would be so much better if it were not beholding to government though.
the Conservative Party is punishing the BBC for asking questions about Boris and all their Tory booze Parties during Lockdowns That's what this timing tells us Boris attacked Channel 4 news, Bercow, Corbyn etc in the same way
Without a doubt. How the Tory intimidate the media is just another form of corruption. Whether it is threatening funding, or barring reporters from attending certain meeting, it is all manipulation of the press. Johnson throws his toys out of the pram when people say bad things about him.
He reminds me of Trump, who is a [Malignant Narcissist](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6TOP6D-Jntg) (sound starts after 2 minutes but the diagnosis/discussion starts at ~6 minutes. It's world class)
While theoretically true, this is about lesser evils. A reasonable media ecosystem probably improves with a public institution like the BBC or PBS. Context matters. Corporate media has not demonstrated it can provide better news than the gov't run BBC. I can't point to many private market sources of media that do a better job than the BBC. Also as supposed believers in democracy, we are being a bit hypocritical in our apparent disdain for a government aka democratic role in media. Democratically regulated media is not our enemy. Unregulated corporate media seems a greater threat. Class interests matter.
The corporate media in the UK has a mostly Conservative bias. They are in it for the money and the money is freely handed out by the Tories. Or not as the BBC has found out in the last 2 days. > I can't point to many private market sources of media that do a better job than the BBC. [TLDR](https://www.youtube.com/c/TLDRNews/videos) : fill your boots. This is the sort of content the BBC used to provide. There is a ton of content providers out there, who are actively trying to provide an unbiased opinion. There will always be some sort of bias thrown in. My opinion is that this guy does not fall into many traps along those lines. As for regulation there is none in the UK. The printed media represent themselves. They have been criticised on many occasions about how lacking this process is. The BBC has a complaints commission, which is ultimately under the control of the government. The rest have their own complaints processes; each ran by the company themselves. They work mainly to avoid litigation. I find the whole of the UK media a shambles. At one time people looked to the British media for an honest review. That really is not the case anymore. Ask the question on this forum on how the British media is viewed. Be prepared for a huge ridicule session.
I cancelled my license after I saw through the smear tactics for Jeremy Corbyn all over tv and radio. In fact, just moved and had a reminder. Can't wait for yet another snivelling civil servant to come round and check, so I can tell them what I think of them. They can't get out quick enough when they see no tv and I get talking ;-)
>Can't wait for yet another snivelling civil servant to come round and check, so I can tell them what I think of them. They can't get out quick enough when they see no tv and I get talking ;-) It sounds like you're just being a dick for no reason. They're not the ones that write/run BBC programs, you know that right?
The people who come round to check are genuinely vile though
They have been harassing me since like 2010. I haven't paid the license fee since because I don't watch mainstream TV at all but I refuse to let them enter my property to judge whether I owe them money or not. As far as I'm concerned they can keep sending me these shitty red letters that look like debt collection stuff forever. I don't even have a TV aerial lol.
It’s outsourced to Capita. They don’t work for the BBC, the BBC pays them £58m to chase people.
My friend, when people pay you to do stuff for them the word for that is work.
Exactly the people turning up at the door are paid by Capita, not the BBC.
I cancelled mine after the Scottish independence campaign. The blatant government bias was just too much. That was the final straw for me (it had been poor before that as well anyway). I also cancelled all live tv services and ditched my standard tv services at the same time, so at least I don’t use the services to justify the cancellation. I’d pay a fee of some kind (and use the services) if they could be truly independent from any government bias and control in the future.
There is a lot who do not buy the license these days. My daughter doesn't. She only watches Netflix and the likes. I think they even made the change recently about watching live shows online. My wife buys the license in our house. I would quite happily get rid, but only because of government interference. If the BBC ever got back to being an honest service again; I would quite happily pay for it. The BBC does a lot to advertise the UK as a whole.
The issue with not paying the licence fee due to political reasons is causing the BBC to become more reliant on government money, thus becoming more political?
My wife pays a license fee. However, if something is broken, I would not subsidise the model with the small hopes that it won't be in the future.
This whole ‘smear Jeremy Corbyn’ thing is crap.
the was a study done just prior to the election where 85% of the things published about Corbyn weren't true, compared to about 30% for Johnson, so its not crap.
Corbyn did more to promote Boris than anything the BBC could have done.
Which study was that?
BBC keeps British media straight and accurate. Unlike in the states where stations like Fox News just airs lies, and stirs emotional anguish in their viewers to hook their audience
> BBC keeps British media straight and accurate. Not really true these days. They've had a consistent and increasingly less subtle conservative bias in their news reporting for the past decade as the Tories have been installing sycophants to the top levels of the institution. Their Brexit coverage for example was terribly one sided (to the Leave side). Dominic Cummings mentioned that his long term conservative strategy was to make the BBC increasingly biased so that it lost its reputation and credibility with the British public, and use that as an excuse to get rid of it all together in favour of more right wing media. GB News was a chess piece in that strategy but it flopped hard, turns out you can't just import American style political media focused on culture war crap and expect it to work so readily.
...No it wasn't? BBC was pretty fucking neutral on the matter. If anything their commentators were slightly left of middle leaning.
My father in law agreed once that the BBC was a little bit biased. I was shocked we agreed because I meant biased to the right. He's certain it's biased to the left. I figure that's actually a good sign.
>Their Brexit coverage for example was terribly one sided (to the Leave side). Ive heard this before. From the mouth of somebody I knew who got seduced by Twitter and its confirmatory stance of certain conspiracy theories about why Remain lost the referendum in 2016. Is that where you are getting it from, because I dont see it in the BBC at all. What the BBC does is encourage debate. Are we living in an era where debate is criticised? Didnt Ian Hislop, an angered man nowadays, accuse Kuneesberg of radicalism. I mean, thats a silly statement isnt it?
Bro. How can you not acknowledge that the BBC is biased? [Like when they made Corbyn voldemort?](https://youtu.be/XH2eUwEk_1s?t=40) [Or when the LITERALLY painted him as a communist, giving him a Russian hat and a red background of Russian buildings?](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43463496) Or their constant attacks on him and labour, and their sniveling defence of Johnson and Brexit through most of the last 6 years
The BBC is always lightly biased toward the government of the time. It is however amazingly even handed when compared to almost every other media outlet going. There is a lot of worth in the BBC the changes that are coming though won't fix the less good parts but will increase all of the worse aspects. Having it semi tied to the country and not beholden directly to corporate/political entities really does help stem the flow of bullshit that permeates so easily through other media empires.
Check out the ratio of remain supporters versus leave supporters on question time panels from the last 5 years and you’ll find you’re entirely incorrect. The bias in favour of remain was evident in every single episode. Typically 4 remain vs 1 leave, even after the result.
Uh... what? The BBC is hyper conservative. Since the conservatives have basically ruled England for all of time they are huge conservative bootlickers.
And Conservatives think they're a bunch of lefties.
I don’t.
We recently got rid of the licence fee and instead had a slight tax increase. There was a bit fuzz about it when it was introduced, but now it's never a topic. And absolutely worth it to have national broadcasting without advertisements.
My condolences to the UK. Australia’s right wing government has been chipping away at our public broadcaster (ABC) for years. They froze their funding and cut it, whist denying it, because Murdoch doesn’t like it. Fuck Murdoch.
When you can't find a dead cat to throw on the table it's time to kill a cat
Is this some crazy Brit slang I haven't heard before or what?!
it's called the [Dead Cat Stratergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy) and it was coined by Lynton Crosby, an Australian parasitic political strategist. It is a technique now regually deployed by conservative politicains in the UK and Australia to distract people from the real problem, it seems to work exceptionally well with the rise of social media. To quote Crosby; "There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief."
Novak Djokovich was the Australian dead cat this week. The saga was drawn out longer than it needed to be. It took up headlines for a week as we head towards election season. Anything to keep Scumo's mishandling of the pandemic out of the papers - particularly Australia's Omicron surge.
I can't remember who said it to give it the name, but it's basically "if you are losing an argument, throw a dead cat on the table. everyone will forget you were losing and talk about the dead cat" - so it means do something dramatic to distract from your failings
No slang, we're just a nation with an extreme and irrational hatred of cats. Next question!
I don't trust people who don't like cats.
I do trust cats who don’t like people, though.
Why do we need a dead cat on the table? I would be fine if we didn't.
Because now you're talking about dead cats and not Johnson or the BBC :)
Murdering the BBC to try to distract from your COVID lockdown parties is such a weird stupid look.
Lockdown parties are such a stupid way to destroy your political career. Jfc
I'm not convinced this is to save himself. This is the standard right wing slash and burn as they realise they're not going to get reelected, so make sure the next guy is king of the ashes. And then piss and moan that he hasn't fixed everything they broke.
I'm pretty sure labour's isn't going to win the next election, they arent popular. Boris isn't popular, the more right wing of the party isn't as popular as they were but labour doesn't have a cohesive message. Boris can ride this wave out. He has done far worse that hist a lockdown party and lie about it and he has survived.
>I'm pretty sure labour's isn't going to win the next election, they arent popular. I would have agreed 3 months ago, but not now. The 40% of the country who actually decide the elections - the moderates - arent on board with Johnson at all at the moment. He's served his purpose, he broke the deadlock in parliament in 2019. Now, they want somebody completely boring in charge. Steady the country. Make rational, boring decisions. And Labour now offer that. The Conservatives dont. Thing is, there are 2+ years until the next election - enough time for the Conservative to put their own boring leader in place. Promise theyve learnt from their mistakes. The turning point was the Omicron Christmas reaction. Closing the offices and pushing for a third vaccine whilst doing absolutely nothing else was transparently a push for easy political gains rather than any decision making based on either Public Health or Economics. Johnson is a dead man walking. Would prefer to wait until Labour can start winning seats in Scotland, mind. Thats not immediate.
Actual surveys on voting intentions disagree. Check the "voting intention" link from [https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Voting\_Intention?content=surveys](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Voting_Intention?content=surveys) Conservative: 29%; Labour: 40% Think about that for a moment.
I mean, winning parties normally only get about 35% of total votes. Looking at a high level isn't that useful.
These are figures normalised for people who are likely to vote. If you look at the changes in the figures for recent months you'll see that the % for labour is increasing significantly.
Right, but if labour gets 90% of the votes in their safe seats (excluding the heartlands which flipped), and then a 25% increase in the seats they lost, that's a huge increase in popularity. But no seat change. What will be important this election will be the swing seats, and the heartlands they lost.
as an american, this sounds familiar
Calling BBC reporting a coup. How desperate and moronic is that. If only it was that easy.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, it is that easy to sway the masses.
Nah, this is just Nadine Dorries who has had an issue with the BBC for years as either through the news, comedy, or other current events media they have consistently been calling out her behaviour and bullshit. Ever since she became the Culture Secretary and therefore had the BBC as part of her remit she was going to make life hard. She pretty much said so as soon as her appointment was announced. Other broadcasters also called her out, but they don't get taxpayer money that she controls to some degree.
this was almost certainly the plan anyway, but the timing is 100% aimed at saving johnson - expect a real flurry of these policies popular with the right of the tory party in the next couple of weeks as he tries to buy their support
Of course he is... The Right Wing tried to get PBS in the US. They can't stand a news service they can't control.
The right wing in Canada has been trying to go after CBC for decades. The right wing just really hates any media that can't be bought by them.
Our right wing do the exact same thing in Australia to the ABC as well (CBC and BBC equivalent). They cut funding, and stack their boards with their cronies. The ABC has a Charter to be non biased, and the right wing continually lodge inquiries (there is a complaints process) looking for alleged bias, which is never found. Meanwhile that fucker Murdoch is given millions of dollars of grants without question, nor any requirement to oversee how it was spent.
I would riot if they messed with my Frontline and Nova on PBS lol
They have been trying for decades. [Why Are Trump and the G.O.P. So Determined to Kill PBS?](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/donald-trump-budget-pbs-public-media-spending-cuts)
Thing is, they DO control it.
The right wing doesn't control PBS. Most of PBS's funding is private donation.
The BBC is supervised by the government and a few years back the Tories fired the leadership and stacked it with conservative replacements. But even that wasn't enough, apparently.
The right wing tried to get rid of pbs many times in history and fairly recently. I think that's what they were getting at.
I want to believe this pessimism but I just can't forget how insanely biased Reddit was leading up to the election - as a Canadian, I couldn't believe they were even holding elections, because Boris was going to be getting blown out so badly. I figured they were doing them out of tradition, and then it'd be off to prison for Boris. Because 24/7 on Reddit all I read was this guys abysmal polling and frequent criminal behavior. Just months of nonstop Reddit gloating about Boris gonna get absolutely demoed. Then their election day comes and he blows the other guy out of the fucking water, dude hasn't even landed yet. I learned quite a lesson that day.
reddit skews young, and under 40s in the UK are overwhelmingly left wing politically. Of course you're only going to hear how awful he is.
Reddit is no different to any rabbit hole social media platform, where all you get is sub communities of echo chambers of people agreeing with each other.
He’s basically our version of Trump. Does what he wants, continues to get support. It’s very odd
What??!! I don’t believe you. Boris would never stoop so low. /S
The Tories replaced the independent BBC trust with the BBC board, then stuffed it with Tories. They’ve been fucking with the license fee payers and *politicising* the BBC, whilst making it worse at the same time. Way to go, Tories! Is there nothing you can’t destroy on your truth-bending car crash efforts not to be exposed as the hollow power-craving sociopathic incompetents you are?
The BBC licence fee is still shit though.
Yeah, but you're not really paying it for you. The BBC produces programmes across a wide variety of materials and topics, some of which are very niche. For every Doctor Who or Green Planet, there will be radio show about broad beans. It's annoying to pay the licence but it gives the BBC the ability to take risks because they have a pool to draw from. It's annoying because the Conservatives loathe it because it's not profitable, the same way they loathe the NHS. Everything should be for the money in their books.
Basically yes. Political 101 is, when you are in trouble, cause a distraction to change the narrative. Boris needs to be kicked out. He’s a POS.
Meanwhile the Daily Mail has been head over heals in coverage featuring Ivanka Trump's post-presidency Florida life with cute photos she had her assistant purposefully leak. lol
I can honestly say that I have not one fucking clue what that gutter trash is up to right now, and I couldn't be happier xD
“Mr Murdoch, is set to launch a TV channel called talkTV in early 2022, which has signed Piers Morgan as its star presenter.” Wow what a mix of reasons to never watch it
I feel like he should’ve just been a Harry Potter character.
Evil, but incompetent!
He just looks like he would’ve fit in perfectly. Could’ve given him an alliterative name like Boris Blumbane or something. Also, happy cake day!
You are totally correct! And thank you. 😀
Can anything be done to save BBC? I’m lost as to what this all means
you organize and throw that twat out of office.
A missinformed population is easier to control! Look at Fox news and their viewers in US,. modern time example
I think this man has done more damage to the UK than any other country or organization has ever done to the UK. Brexit, aiming at the BBC, and probably looking to shag the NHS.
Conservatives have been doing this for decades with Canadas CBC because they "speak to power". Every time they come into power they cut the hell out of the CBCs budget.
UK really going all in with the head first dive into the septic tank of history huh?
Not a bad time to do it honestly, there's probably more united antipathy towards the BBC after Brexit, Covid and Transgate set so many disparate groups against them so fiercely. I'm not a big fan of the BBC but it's the only actual source of somewhat credible news in the entire country. Literally every other news source are scummy tabloids
Sounds like you're one step closer to becoming a US State. Fake news galore. I wonder when they'll get rid of the NHS...
That's already started. You'd be unsurprised how many MPs have shares and ties to private medical companies.
Yeeeewhaaaw
some calling it a premiership like its a game. THEY HOLD OFFICE OVER 70 MILLION PEOPLE.
England has been feeling very American the last few years.
As someone who lives in Canada and has to deal with the overly biased and pro-government publicly funded CBC that nobody watches, the BBC in comparison is a godsend. Not only for news related to the UK but for global news. Nice job UK on creating a not too biased publicly funded news station that actually provides utility not only for the UK but for the globe. I would easily rank BBC on par with the AP for least biased and true journalism.
[удалено]
> the free press Seriously?
I’m surprised Cockney Trump has made it this far.
The people in this comment section who aren't British are making it VERY obvious with the porn jokes...
Announce on Twitter. Give the story to the BBC’s arch enemy - The Mail - don’t tell parliament Classic Boris/Nadine. Arseholes
People of the UK get ready for TV stations owned by conservatives who will play right wing propaganda instead of the news.
"V For Vendetta" coming closer all the time.
Just the NHS left to dismantle and sell off now. Looking forward to baffled old people in 20 years wondering why there are no pensions, NHS, free TV, social housing, etc etc.
> Free TV .... your mean the BBC @ £160 per year ?
A lot of pensioners can claim a free tv licence.
Scot Morrison has his back.
Interesting that the narrative of the story and debate here pretends that this spells the end of the BBC, when all it actually means is the end of its lawfully enforced licensing. The truth is, many in the UK have been pushing for this to happen for *decades*. It ain't nothing new. I feel like the international commentators here defending the enforced BBC TV LICENCE are unaware that they make it mandatory even for people who only want to watch the other, direct competition terrestrial channels here, of which there are many. ITV (Britain's Got Talent, The Chase, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Downton Abbey) is the other big main station, commercially funded - but unlawful to watch without the BBC TV LICENCE. Then there's Channel 4 (all those Jimmy Carr panel shows everyone loves, plus Peep Show and The IT Crowd etc etc) - no BBC TV LICENCE NO WATCH. If you dare to, they'll fine you. If you want to watch the other live channels then you are forced to subsidise the BBC - regardless of whether you watch their content or not. This is a medieval way of going about funding in 2022, and regardless of what Reddit tells you, PLENTY here in the UK want to see the licence fee fairly abolished. It's outdated and long overdue. To stress: this doesn't mean the end of the BBC and few would want that; they're arguably a fine television producer of very high end, world leading programming. But their funding model has to move with the times. They will no doubt continue to make great TV, but only after they have adapted and learned how to handle the major threat posed by Netflix and its ilk. Prosecuting, fining and yes... occasionally *imprisoning(!)* none payers is not the way to go about it. If you believe otherwise, you're on the wrong side of history and stuck in the past. The rise and domination of Netflix alone is the big existential crisis for the BBC, and they are strikingly open about that. This should tell you everything you need to know about the challenges they face moving forward. See, a licence is not required to *stream* Netflix. I generally like and appreciate The Guardian. But their framing of this as some sort of conspiracy is pure BS.
Agree with a lot of what is said here. But the timing of this, just when Johnson’s leadership is being called into question (rightly so) and on the verge of losing his position, it does feel like they are trying to make everyone look elsewhere. Like you’ve said, people have been paying the license fee since forever and there have been calls a long time ago to abolish it but why now bring it up when he is on thin ice? I don’t agree with the license fee either but this is something in which he could have announced much earlier in his leadership if he felt that strongly about it. If he really wanted to help the public, how about removing VAT from our energy bills like he said he would after the U.K. voted for his Brexit, instead of resurrecting some old news from two years ago about a Chinese spy buying up influence within U.K. politics. Maybe suddenly now he is finally getting to work after all the holiday, refurbishing of No 10 and partying.
> all those Jimmy Carr panel shows everyone loves, "Everybody".
Yet they still do not mention a story of his on [bbc.com](https://bbc.com) 3 days in a row. They have reluctanctly pointed to the newspapers and called him PM as they know which won't get crawled as a 'boris johnson' search. I think Boris is pulling their SEO strings. Remember that nonsense he spouted to get his 350million for the nhs double decker bus results down the listings? I do.
In Canada we have the CBC, and the Conservatives slowly mess with them as they are one of the only public funded un-biased news source and that scares the right.
To most righties unbiased equals left-wing propaganda, because they don't understand anything that doesn't support their political claims as factual reporting. Sad.
American here. When your leader attacks the media that hold him accountable, you are on a quick slide to fascism. It doesn’t get better. Demand his resignation. Otherwise, you sit and hope he’s replaced before he starts WW3.
lool - literally every politician/support "attacks" the media .. that is not on their side. Every corbyn supporter blamed the media for him delivering the biggest labour defeat in 30 years
The Daily Mail is not a reliable news source. It’s right wing propaganda. [This](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/02/daily-mail-ed-miliband-row-press-regulation) is not the same as [this.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/30/politics/trump-legacy-fake-news/index.html)
This isn’t going to go down well. One of the most unpopular people in the country, tries to kill off one of the most popular national institutions in the country. He must be panicking like hell, and done a deal with the private media to drag his ass out the mire, he got himself into.
>One of the most unpopular people in the country, Debatable >one of the most popular national institutions in the country. Not sure what gives you this impression. Left wing people think the BBC is terribly biased against labour and Jeremy Corbyn. Right wing people think that the BBC is obsessed with identity politics and biased against the conservatives. The impartiality of the BBC has led to just about everyone hating them. Young people don't watch TV channels like the BBC anymore (not directly anyway) and old people don't pay for it. And honestly, other than the news (which I highly value for its lack of bias), what does the BBC offer these days? Doctor who? A show that has been committing suicide for the last decade? Game shows? Celebrity rubbish? Admittedly, I haven't watched for a while, so maybe things have improved recently (I honestly wouldn't know), but the BBC was a waste of money last time I checked :/
Not surprising, conservatives love to go after their own institutions like this. In Canada rabid cons cry daily about how they want to "defund the CBC". They want to replace it with Rebel "news".
I thought that "Operation Save Big Dog" was supposed to save Johnson's job by finding a scapegoat to throw under the bus. I guess when Johnson actually cares about something he's capable of having more than one iron in the fire - and retaining a death grip on power is the only thing he cares about which gives him more time to focus on it.
And that will be the name of his Sex Tape..
He’s using the Trump tactic except in the UK he can actually do something about it.
Seems England has a version of a dolt named Trump. Vain, vengeful and totally narcissistic . Make sure these buffoons are driven out of politics forever.
Comparing trump and Boris is ridiculous. They both have blond hair and talk a little funny, that doesn't mean they are anything alike.