Re: Yes, go on kiddies, mod me down.
" "The BBC doesn't exist to make a profit, but that mistake aside the idea that the state always knows best is naive, childlike even."
Ditto assuming journalists always have the publics best interests at heart. All they want is a salacious story that sells copies or gets viewers. You don't think the BBC is after ratings too? Please. "
The BBC has a very big profit making arm, one which is funded by the licence fee and taxation and is growing all the time... ...to the detriment of the market. It is also true to say that the BBC advertises its own products, and it is true to say that it is engaged in a very big ratings battle. It is disturbing to see this large corporation exercising so much power, when the people behind this are substantially comprised of individuals with a political philosophy of quasi liberal-socialism which includes the concept of 'false consciousness', thus enabling them - like the Labour party - to know better, and thereby destroy parts of British culture and history; for example Florence Nightingale was made into a racist and the BBC were challenged; their weak excuses fell and they apologised, but this is happening a great deal as poorly educated graduates, spoon fed risible crap, flow into the BBC. They have been caught with their pants down, making the news, operating quiz shows for which there were no winners or for which winners were selected, falsifying the news, and on it goes; I can produce evidence for this and am among the sort of people who continually badger them for their misdeeds.
The BBC has become so powerful that, during the Proms, it has been operating a socialising mechanism for thousands of pounds; free tickets and booze for the famous, squeezing their hands and persuading them to speak against cutting them from many radio stations and too many TV channels. Similarly, they persuaded people to sign a letter condemning the 'cuts'. The BBC are given billions of pounds, both by direct taxation (licence fee) and indirect (govt. finance), and until recently people who failed to pay received a criminal conviction and often a spell in gaol. Even if you do not watch any TV programmes (and to watch any of the BBC's competitors such as Sky, ITV and such you must pay the BBC's licence fee), having a television and using the net to view television programming can get you into trouble; Lord Hall wants licence fee money from computers and mobile phones as well.
This is the tip of the iceberg; if you look beneath the covers you'll find that the BBC have some excessively high earning staff, and that recruitment of vital posts comes more often than not from within their own PC ranks.
The BBC would be fined heavily for anti competitive behaviour were this a genuine market, and that is the point; this is a state/licence fee funded organisation, operating in a commercial setting, staffed by a mix of people (particularly in senior positions) whose aggregate political and social philosophy is at variance with the population they presume to serve. It does not matter what you or I think, but it does matter what people want to see (and fewer repeats by this wealthy broadcaster would be a start) and what the truth is, and it certainly is not (e.g.) twisting Neil Kinnock's words to upset US politicians (I hereby show less bias than the supposedly unbiased BBC:
BBC drama commissioning controller Ben Stephenson; "We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking." Mark Thompson: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left.". Andrew Marr: "The BBC is “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large [All this] creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC”. Telegraph: "Horrible Histories criticised for inaccuracy after showing fictional Florence Nightingale racially discriminate against black nurse Mary Seacole, BBC Trust finds" "I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’". Peter Sissons, Former BBC News and Current Affairs presenter.
You can Grep this stuff on the web, and worse.