Benighted

This blog has occasionally mentioned the activities of Julian Knight MP, who laboured, thankfully unnoticed, in the BBC Business Unit for five years from 2002.

Julian shares his manifesto for chairmanship of the DCMS Select Committee with Express readers this morning. Sentence construction and punctuation seem not to have bothered the eagle eyes of sub-editors.

Reforming the way the BBC is funded and encouraging it to use more outside production, make more lucrative use of it’s fantastic back catalogue to fund programmes can be key to changing the culture at the BBC. It is the current cosseted economics of the BBC that allow it to indulge in groupthink.

Don’t forget, the BBC, in terms of employees, is the size of a chunky town it has it’s own culture and this forms - often unconsciously - how it reports the news, particularly subjects which are against the grain for the west London media elites. And because of the existence of the licence fee - people feel, rightly they have a right to judge their output, they see or hear lop-sided views and they no longer think Aunty knows best, people want greater accountability. We are not happy being spoon fed and told what to think, we want the national broadcaster to reflect us. This will only happen if the way the BBC is paid for becomes fair and transparent and Aunty learns it is not all about her.