It is that smarmy attitude that bothers me most about it. The ‘We know what is for your own good’ attitude that is incredibly undemocratic. If the BBC provides percieved value to British television viewers, then it will have no problem collecting a subscription revenue. But to say ‘If you want to purchase a television, even if you never watch the BBC, you must pay a tax’, well, that is garbage. The worst of it is, you are subsidizing slanted news. Would you feel A-OK about being forced to pay a Fox News tariff? I think not.
No, I do not pay the BBC tax. I never will. But just as non-Americans occasionally make a comment or two about America, I am taking the liberty of making a comment or two about Britain.
Government services have to be paid for by taxes. This particular form of tax falls on everyone that has a TV. The alternative would be for it to fall on everyone, regardless of TV ownership. That’s probably a realistic alternative, given that TV ownership has risen to near universal levels.
But this complaint that because someone does use a particular government service, they shouldn’t have to pay for it is just a complete load of crap.
First of all, there is absolutely no such thing as unslanted news. In fact, it is nearly impossible to communicate any narrative via any medium to anybody without injecting some form of personal bias. The British public is, on the whole, media savvy enough to take anything that comes out of any news outlet with a grain of salt.
Secondly, while I mostly agree with you about the license I must add that without it the BBC’s output would not only be as shitty as that of the commercial channels (ITV, Channel 5 and, to a lesser extent, Channel 4) but would be riddled with braincramping advertisements all the live long day. While I agree that people should have a choice (ie. people should be able to choose whether or not they want to receive BBC and pay the license accordingly) frankly, I for one would rather pay the license.
Just to add to the continuing hijack about the alleged BBC anti war bias…
A study conducted last year actually found that the BBC’s Iraq war coverage was the most consistently pro war out of all the major UK broadcasters. The BBC was more likely to quote British or US sources, more likely to show the Iraqi people as pro invasion, less likely to report on civilian casualities etc.
Although i guess if you’re convinced that the BBC is anti war all this will do is persuade you that the UK media is rabidly foaming at the mouth anti war, and the BBC is just anti war… :rolleyes:
Not that I doubt this neccessarily, but does anyone have any credible information on this? I’ve seen some anti-license fee websites, but I don’t know if it’s a common sentiment in the UK or more analogous to the anti-IRS loons we have in Montana.