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Comment by kchamplewski | Hacker News Reader

The post states:

> This policy will not apply to taxpayer-funded entities, including independent public broadcasters.

So quite probably no, since the BBC is an independent public broadcaster (much like NPR in the US) - it is state funded but not directly controlled by the state; it maintains editorial independence.

Of course conclusively defining editorial independence seems like quite a non-trivial task. It's made even more confusing by the fact that it goes on to state:

> This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state.

While the BBC and other taxpayer funded independent public broadcasters are not editorially controlled by the state, isn't being taxpayer funded synonymous with being controlled financially by the state?

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That ... feels like a major loophole, still. It requires Twitter to be able to gauge which state funded media are "really" independent.

I can't really make a convincing case right now, I'll admit, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like a special exemption for (at least) one state-funded entity, for hand-wavy reasons. That seems like in practice it will translate into a policy of banning any PRC equivalent of the BBC, should it ever exist. (Is there currently something close?)

Edit: mjw1007 gives a sense in which the BBC may be more like Chinese state media in this context [1], while derefr gives a more concrete test for deciding which bucket to put the BBC in [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740903

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740759

It says in the article that they're relying on other organizations like Reporters without Borders to determine editorial independence.

Ah okay. I would have expected a caveat like that to appear in the same paragraph. Thanks for pointing that out.

Depends on whether the state can politically afford to rescind the media entity's budget.

Compare these two scenarios:

• I, an advertiser, give YouTube $20. YouTube decides to not give the content-creator on whose media my ads ran that $20. That's up to them, because YouTube controls the relationship. I, as an advertiser, don't even really have a relationship with content creators; I just have a relationship with YouTube, and they have a separate relationship with YouTube, and sometimes YouTube chooses to pay out the content creator with money that I just paid in. But that's a policy choice, not an obligation. As an advertiser, I don't care what happens to my money as long as my ads run and people see them. They can do whatever they like with the money—pay content creators, pay themselves, burn it, whatever.

• I, a buyer, give PayPal $20. PayPal is obligated to give (most of) that $20 to the person I am buying goods from; the $20 is a liability on their balance sheet. Why? Because I (and a number of other people) would get quite cross with PayPal if they didn't give the money to the person I intended it for. That transmission-of-money-to-intended-recipient is their business model; it's the reason I trusted them with my money in the first place.

A "taxpayer funded" media entity like the BBC is presumably more like a PayPal-style relationship than a YouTube-style relationship: the taxpayers are giving the government money under the assumption that it is obligated to give that money to the BBC; effectively, the BBC is the one the public feels they owe the money to, and the government is just serving a role as the BBC's tax-collector. If the funds were spent somewhere else, people would be very cross with the government.

The BBC isn’t ‘tax-payer funded’, it’s funded by the license fee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

The license fee is a mandatory tax on all television ownership, regardless of whether you watch the BBC or not, whose amount and rules are set entirely by the government. When thinking about how much financial independence the BBC has, you can more or less just think of it as government funding. Also, the BBC World Service (which broadcasts news to the rest of the world) is partially funded by direct government payments as a form of "soft power" influence and used to be even more dependent on direct government funding.

It’s not a tax, as it isn’t collected by government. It’s also not ‘on all television ownership’ - you only need to pay the license fee if you watch public broadcast television as it airs, or you use the BBC iPlayer.

Serious question, isn't the license fee basically a defacto tax in the UK?

Is the license fee not a tax, or in context, equivalent to one? It's not like only BBC viewers are paying it.

You only need to pay the license fee if you watch terrestrial TV as it airs, or you use the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC's domestic news is reasonably independent, but I'm not sure the same can be said for the World Service (which until recently was funded directly by the Foreign Office).

>So quite probably no, since the BBC is an independent public broadcaster (much like NPR in the US) - it is state funded but not directly controlled by the state; it maintains editorial independence.

I don't work in the BBC but it usually works like "you have editorial independence but if you don't say what we want you'll see what happens to your budget"

I do work at the BBC and the ‘budget’ isn’t controlled by the government to the degree you imply. Negotiations around the BBC’s funding situation and remit occur every 11 years [1], which somewhat transcends the political tit-for-tat you are alluding to.

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...

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