STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Defund the BBC?
By Staff News & Analysis - March 02, 2015

Why the BBC doesn't deserve to have the licence fee increased … BBC executives may be relieved at the latest Parliamentary report on funding but the Corporation needs to put its house in order … There was doubtless a sense of relief in the executive suites on the upper floors of New Broadcasting House this week as BBC bosses digested the contents of the latest Parliamentary inquiry into its operations. The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (CMS) had undertaken a prolonged investigation and at the end of that process what emerged was …. something not very radical. On the licence fee – that goose which lays an annual egg stuffed with £4 billion for the Beeb to gorge on – the committee pronounced that there is "no better alternative for funding the BBC in the near term". What a relief. Trebles all round! – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: So long as the Brits have BBC, England will have its voice.

Free-Market Analysis: Once one understands how much of the information band British media promotions occupy, it is difficult to watch the BBC for any length of time. Watch the Beeb for a day and be educated about how to believe and what to say.

  • ISIS and Al Qaeda are shadowy Islamic terrorist groups that want to take over the world.
  • Central banks: Large and in-charge and let's keep it that way.
  • The British Empire is fallen. Britain and its City have no real power these days.
  • Large corporations are the fulcrum of the market and the predictable outcome of capitalism.
  • If wars must be fought, England will fight them and win, usually because of a certain "special relationship."
  • Scotland Yard and all the other intel agencies that swarm around Downing Street are the bitter fruit of perilous times. They are necessary and there will be more of them.
  • Global warming is the most pressing threat of the modern day.

The Beeb is a prime exponent of dominant social themes. Each finds space for elaboration on news programming. These themes, in our view, have only one aim: They promote more centralization. Centralization of money, power, health care, media, etc.

The centralization being sought is worldwide. Britain is an epicenter of globalism, a cynosure of the internationalist movement. To some degree it is an occupied country, with its "plebes" struggling along, torn by poverty and tortured increasingly by Britain's authoritarian mindset.

More:

Among the BBC top brass there is a perennial anxiety about a perceived threat to its funding. And who could blame them? Consider this: unlike any of its media competitors the BBC is able – give or take a few million – to predict what its income will be next year and the year after that. Now think how much of an advantage that gives the Corporation.

… The CMS committee went some way to acknowledging these new realities … Furthermore, the committee floated the idea that other outfits should be able to bid for some of the licence fee revenue ("top-slicing" is the ugly neologism coined for this) and suggested that BBC should cooperate with local newspapers rather than crush them with its superior financial firepower. Will all this send a shiver down the spine of Lord Hall, the Director General, and his minions, or is that the sound of a can being kicked down the road?

There is, in my view, little real chance of any government of any stripe taking an axe to the roots of the BBC. There is no doubt that BBC has real political enemies – some of whom have genuine cause for complaint about their treatment at the hands of an organisation which at heart still maintains a left-of-centre ethos.

The article goes on to inform us that the BBC is indeed "loathed" but that a lot of British citizens enjoy its social programming, which produces some splendid sitcoms and historical dramas. We also learn that, "A truly national broadcaster can and should be a unifying influence." And that in an "increasingly fissiparous" time, the Beeb has a job to do unifying the country as only it can do.

We're not so certain about this latter point. If there is any country that has been responsible for significant misery in the world, Britain ought to qualify. From its drugging of China to its rape of India to its vast and ruinous economic interference around the world via its influential Bank of England and Bank for International Settlements, Britain can hardly claim to be an unadulterated force for good.

The article does have the grace to admit that the BBC itself has come on hard times. "When I joined the BBC back in the 1970s it was taken for granted – pretty much by everyone – that the BBC was a very good thing. Almost above reproach. But that was before the blatant anti-Thatcher bias of the eighties, before the grotesqueries of the Savile revelations and – the journalistic nadir – the libellous attack on Lord McAlpine. It is clear now, to more or less everyone, that the BBC has feet of clay, just like the rest of us."

After this criticism, the article is prepared to forgive the BBC. "The BBC knows, in its heart, it has done wrong. To some extent it is a chastened institution." Lord knows where this metaphorical "heart" is located, but its continued beating is sound enough to warrant an upbeat conclusion. The article optimistically suggests that the BBC should concentrate on impartiality and on moving past the paternalism and cronyism that have marked its conduct in recent decades. The article concludes, "Well…. we can but hope."

In fact, it is difficult to see much hope unless the BBC is axed altogether. That would solve the problem of the Beeb's endlessly misleading programming. But the axing would have to be carried out by the same elite groups in Britain that have made the Beeb a household word, and its funding a mandatory provocation.

Those who derive the most advantage from the Beeb's incessant warmongering, credulous reports on the benefits of economic centralization and monetary monopolies would have to participate in the demise of their creation.

After Thoughts

"Well … we can but hope."

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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