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Perhaps the solution is to stop publicly funding the BBC (and NPR)? They are popular enough to survive on their own. Then all of the arguments are moot.

Perhaps those in favour of continuing public funding of the BBC can explain why people should be forced to pay a licence fee for a channel they don't watch. You get a criminal record - not a minor issue for anyone - if you persist in not paying if at the same time you own and use a TV even if you use it to only watch Japanese wrestling on a non-BBC channel. How would this go down in the US? If you hack your TV to make it impossible to attach an aerial (old style) or a cable service which excludes BBC you might get away with it. I'm not informed on that.

It used to be the case that you required a TV license merely to possess a TV. This is no longer the case, and you can possess a TV without a license as long as you do not use it to receive any broadcast media. You also need the TV license to use the BBCs online media services, but if you also opt out of those, there's no need to pay the fee.

The BBC claim they can detect if you're watching, but this is of course, bullshit. The TV receives broadcast media - it doesn't send anything out. The only way they can catch you is in the act, if you leave your blinds or curtains open and they can see the TV playing live.

The main tactic they use to make people pay the license is constant intimidation and threats. There is a form you can fill out to clearly state that you do not use a TV for any of the purposes which require a license fee, but this has little use as the bullies will still come knocking even if you fill it out.

The main thing people need is awareness that they do not need to pay the license fee to merely own a TV for watching Netflix or anything not covered by the license. If one of their cronies comes knocking, you tell them to get lost. If they come again, threaten to report them for harassment. If they take you to court, you explain that you don't use the TV for any of the covered purposes and the BBC pays your court costs and leaves you alone after that.

> The TV receives broadcast media - it doesn't send anything out.

Old school CRT TVs and monitors most definitely rebroadcast what they are displaying [1]. Modern TVs still do, but not at the same power levels. I would guess that a tempest attack on a modern TV is very difficult. I don't know if the BBC has ever used any of these techniques. But it's not impossible.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29

> It used to be the case that you required a TV license merely to possess a TV.

This has never been the case.

Worse in Germany. In the past, you paid for public broadcasting if you possessed a device capable of receiving a broadcast - independently of what you used it for, or if at all. Even that wasn't coercive enough for the powers that be, so now it's just a household tax, no way of escape left.

Same reason you pay for fire service even if you don’t burn your house down. It’s a public service, available to you if you want it.

What about the rest of the organisation?

What about it? The non-current affairs content is often excellent, especially the BBC4 channel. The further from current affairs, the less the pressure to engage in both-sidesism.

"Both-sidesism" doesn't necessarily result in bias, but it does make the content worse; having leftwing nonsense and rightwing nonsense in the same show will result in an equal weight of complaints from both sides, but that doesn't mean the public has been well-informed.

I mean, the right has a similar critique of the BBC: 'the outgoing Leader of the Opposition's Director of Communications learned his trade from his daddy running the whole BBC', 'The presenter of the BBC's flagship topical news discussion programme has had successful complaints held against her about her treatment of a right wing guest' and 'the BBC is frequently accused of having a liberal bias by its own journalists, including some who aren't notably right leaning or confrontational'. And it's equally insubstantial about actual reporting - with complaints about that having been upheld on both sides for various programmes over the past.

Apparently people who present political programmes sometimes have political views and differences of opinions, and sometimes get hired by partisan bodies. Who knew? FWIW the current Director of Communications for the Conservative Party in Number 10 is a guy who was previously employed by an outspokenly Labour-supporting tabloid to chase round previous Conservative PMs dressed as a chicken during election campaigns. And the BBC's most outspokenly conservative journalist Andrew Neil is someone the left were desperate to see interview the Conservative party leader in the run up to the election on the basis they expected Neil to absolutely savage him.

> the left were desperate to see [Andrew Neil] interview the Conservative party leader

Indeed but it was because all the other party leaders had submitted to his interviewing and it was seen as blatantly unfair that someone with a track record of, let's be nice, wildly inaccurate and misleading statements should be able to skip the process.

Agreed. But it was also because regardless of his politics being largely aligned with Johnson's and if anything further to the right, Neil could be relied upon to aggressively question Johnson on his inaccurate and misleading statements and track record in government (more so than some of the lighter interviewers who I suspect have considerably greater issues with Johnson and his platform). If they'd thought Neil's [undisputed] personal bias would have lead him to softball or even stan for Johnson rather than challenging all the candidates equally toughly, it would have been different.

You've missed my point, the point isn't that a right wing person is on the BBC, the point is that the BBC shouldn't be political and by having prominent partisans employed and having a revolving door between the "non-partisan" BBC and political organisations you fundamentally create a political organisation that is an arm of the state.

It doesn't matter who the Conservative party have as their director of comms, it matters that there's a revolving door between a state broadcaster and the political orgnisations that they are menat to be covering.

> For those in the US who may not understand this, imagine you had a state broadcaster funded by taxes, and it had been putting on shows presented by Roger Ailes.

As a British person living in the US, this is absolute nonsense.

Roger Ailes used his television network to aggressively present a one-sided view that demonised progressivism, and fed baby-boomers a steady diet of Republican talking points every evening.

The BBC has done nothing remotely similar – but it makes a very convenient punching bag for supporters of the previous opposition leader – a man who had the ardent support of the party faithful, but who was incapable of translating that into national appeal.

Seriously, that was ridiculous. Their bias is practically worn on the sleeve.

I will never forget the way the BBC "covered" Corbyn, with the heavy handed propaganda techniques and constant repetition of patently ridiculous smears. Meanwhile, that BoJo prick had his gaffes covered over, such as [1].

I'll never forget how the BBC "covered" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and David Kelly.

The original article mentions ever so briefly how the BBC "covered" the troubles - it was a constant stream of one sided filth for decades. To this day, coverage of those years remains sheer propaganda, though with less naked venom and foaming at the mouth.

So, when people write articles like this implying the BBC walks a tight rope of bias, my stomach churns. Like the Guardian, they never deserved their reputation and have gotten tremendously worse in the last decades.

[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-boris-joh...

> I'll never forget how the BBC "covered" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and David Kelly.

Are you serious? There was a whole government-sponsored inquiry over this that kneecapped the BBC basically because it had covered the intelligence that led up to the war critically.

Yeah - they sure shut the fuck up about that inquiry when David Kelly showed up dead in a field two days later didn't they. They called it a suicide and never brought it up again.

Much like how the BBC has "covered" torture, collateral murder, and the likes which Assange and Snowden revealed - better than the tabloids, and not nearly good enough.

I’m sorry, but your facts are wrong. The inquiry was around the events leading up to David Kelly’s death, not the other way around .

And re: whether he was murdered - pretty much everyone who knew David Kelly, including his wife, called it a suicide because there was absolutely no evidence that his death was anything but a suicide.

I don't know who you're trying to fool, this thread was scrubbed from the front page. Anyway:

He gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the 15th and 16th of July, and was found dead on the 17th.

...

> One of the witnesses who gave evidence to Hutton was David Broucher, the UK's permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament. In 2002 or 2003 he had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded; Kelly had replied "I will probably be found dead in the woods".

Don't remember BBC making much of a deal of that quote.

His wife was probably scared shitless and in no space to fight. And there were many who didn't find the official line credible including doctors, the former leader of the Conservative Party, and MP Norman Baker, among many others. Try checking your own facts before calling people wrong.

Yes, lots of people don't find the official line about the Kennedy assassination or the 9/11 attacks or the MMR vaccine convincing but hey, I don't pay attention to them either.

The idea that you know more about David Kelly's state of mind at the time than his own family is sort of galling.

> Like the Guardian, they never deserved their reputation and have gotten tremendously worse in the last decades.

Thanks for the comment. As someone from outside the UK I know very little about the BBC. Could you elaborate on your views regarding The Guardian?

The parent comment does not represent the views of most British people FYI.

The Guardian has come under fire recently for having a pretty anti-trans editorial board. At the same time, it's still one of the more left-leaning broadsheets in the UK.

The Guardian presents itself as Britain's establishment left newspaper, but undermined Labour's leader, the most effective left wing leader in the country, constantly and consistently for years.

The Guardian being fake left wing might not be the view of the average Briton, but Chomsky and Klein would agree. The average Briton voted for Brexit then Googled what it meant after they won. Also, I'm not British.

Left wing leaders should not be immune from criticism from the left-leaning press. Much of it well deserved I would say, as would a good number of his MPs. His replacement (announced today) has a mountain to climb