| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
Cleaning the BBC's Augean stables
I wonder how the BBC will report today the recommendations by MPs that are to be published in the Commons? No doubt there have already been a whole series of top level editorial meetings and the agreed editorial line has been issued to all news managers. However, if the take of the MSM on the expected recommendations is correct, the reporting will focus on the decriminalisation of the licence fee and the abolition of the Trust model invented in 2007.
However, the devil may be in the unglamorous detail. Making major inroads into BBC secrecy by allowing in the daylight of the National Audit Office to the BBC's books is something the organisation has long fought. But the BBC spends £4bn a year of tax – yes, the TV licence is a tax – and taxpayers must have answer for its stewardship. Combined with FOI, this will help stamp out the horrendous financial abuses, the waste, privilege and squander of this bloated bureaucracy.
And secondly, the expected requirement for the BBC to 'port' portions of the TV tax to independent local newspapers across the country may be the start of something interesting. As a Localist, I welcome any devolution of tax and spend from the metropolitan centre to the counties and towns of England, allowing a multiplicity of local voices to speak and be heard. The next step may be, in this multi-platform media age, the handing over of airtime to editorially independent sources. Interesting.
Source: http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2015/02/cleaning-bbcs-augean-stables.html
