Radio Times

by New Worker correspondent

On Monday the Tory Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced that the TV licence was to be frozen at £159 and finally abolished in 2027.
    This met with applause from right wingers who have long sought its abolition. The news did not do down well with trade unions representing those that work for the BBC, which, is of course the only beneficiary of the £159 tax on couch potatoes.
    National Union of Journalists General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet added deplored the fact that the announcement was made before negotiations between the BBC and the government had concluded. She added that the move was only a distraction from the Prime Minister’s recent woes: “The BBC’s finest script writers would have a job making this stuff up, it’s beyond parody. When the evidence of partying, hypocrisy, lies and dissembling is mounting, what does this government do in response? It blames the journalists and the news outlets holding them to scrutiny, and plots acts of revenge”. She seems to have forgotten that many of the revelations have come from Tory insiders and published in those revolutionary organs such as the Mail, Telegraph and Times.
    She concluded her panegyric by saying that “Those Reithian principles of informing, educating and entertaining are as important today as they have ever been. To undermine that would be an act of cultural vandalism and we hope that the public sees these attacks for what they are and rallies to support the BBC and its unarguable value to our society.”
    That give the game away. While John Reith would never tolerate fourth rate rubbish like game shows and cookery programmes the BBC spews out, Reith was always politically reactionary. In the 1926 General Strike, when the recently founded BBC had a virtual monopoly of news, it was a loyal voice of the Government, ignoring the views of trade union leaders and persistently lying about events across the country. That continues to this day. Anyone who has ever been involved in a strike large enough to be reported in the media knows that knows that the BBC is just as bad as any openly Tory newspaper at distorting the workers’ struggle. Many readers will have been on massive marches which have been covered by TV channels from across the world, but not a peep reported on the BBC.
    Philippa Childs, Head of broadcasting union BECTU also claimed that: “The BBC is a revered institution that is both respected and envied worldwide, and an essential part of our national story”. This is of course nonsense on stilts, but it highlights the point that the BBC’s bias is particularly dangerous precisely because it is served up as balance neutrality.
    Protests from broadcasting unions are to be expected. Trade unions are there to look after the interest of their members, but the TUC further disgraced its self by saying that: “We must fiercely protect the public service ethos of the BBC”, a sick joke when we regularly see that institution spewing out rabid anti-trade union propaganda and in the guise of news. In the same message the TUC also praised the BBC for having a “global reach which is nearing half a billion people” which is simply another term for cheering on its imperialist propaganda.
    However those on the left can and must do better than just automatically jump to the defence of the BBC simply because some right wingers raise some mild objections to it now and then. There are plenty of alternative broadcasting outlets available for news and all the best BBC programmes have long since became available on the Freeview nostalgia channels.