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Notes -
Twitter: BBC objects to 'government funded media' label
I'm sorry, I don't really see the point of the complaints. Or rather: I see a point, but it's not interesting or flattering.
The BBC license it's mandated by the government.
The fact that artists and defenders of the BBC itself argue attempts to remove the 'fee' will harm programming or is a deliberate attempt to cow the BBC also militates towards the conclusion that the worries implied by "state-affiliated" or "state-funded" apply - though I grant that it is a more refined arrangement than direct payment.
So...the government not imposing a "fee" is an attack on an institution's functioning but we're supposed to act like it isn't a tax or the BBC isn't government funded?
So what reason does anyone (not benefiting from media branding) have to take any of this seriously? It seems to me that the real basis for complaint here is that BBC doesn't want to even theoretically be in the same bucket as Al Jazeera and RT. But it is precisely the media's fault that terms like "state media" are so badly received. Just as it is the media that marks certain dictators as "reformers" and others "strongmen" with "regimes" to aid its attempts to manufacture consent. They constructed this complex of Words That Hint At Things But Can't Be Called Out Cause They're Technically Correct.
So, because the media doesn't want to be marked by its own taboo-words and bad branding everyone is supposed to pretend that an entity funded by a government mandated license, whose supporters claim would fail without aforementioned government mandate everyone is supposed to ignore the correct labeling?
I thought the NPR label was a bit tenuous (assuming the 10% government funding stat I’ve seen is accurate), but the BBC is absolutely state-run media.
The whole “editorial independence” thing is a joke. Here’s a test: could the BBC run a piece calling the Queen a cunt without government consequences? If they couldn’t, then they aren’t editorially independent.
That's not a good test. A good test would be - if BBC did something the government really hated, could the government pull their financing? It doesn't have to be something obscene or revolting, just something that is very inconvenient for the government. If they could, then they exist at the sufferance of the government, and their "independence" is just a leash that is long enough for them not to feel it, but it's still there. If they could not, or it would be very hard (e.g. on the level of passing Constitutional amendment in the US) - then there's a real independence, even if technically financed by the governmental decree.
In theory, any government could retaliate against a sufficiently annoying journalist - even in countries with well established norms around the freedom of the press, there are many informal ways that a journalist might feel the displeasure of the government. But of course, there's a big difference between being arrested or censored for telling the wrong story, and simply facing a social or career penalty or losing access.
Personally, it's my observation that it's quite the opposite. In many circles one now faces a penalty for siding with the government, and journalists are taught to see themselves as agents of disruption, as adversaries to established power.
Well, yes, the question is how easy it is to do that and what would be the consequences. When we see something like this:
can we still claim they are "independent"? If the government can tell (successfully) the journalists what words to use, is it not government-controlled speech?
What circles are those? What I am seeing more and more nowdays is that the journalists are taught to be always the agents of The Swamp, and if The Swamp is by some freak accident of nature is temporarily not controlling the government, then disruption it is, until things return to the normal. Once they do, the journalists go back to serving as a branch of the government.
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