Since the BBC is a government entitity the documentary could be construed as electioneering by a foreign government.
One of the ideological successes of the right is to depict everything that is publically owned as being part of the government.
Would you be so cavalier about the distinction if we were talking about Russian state media (for example) instead of British state media? It's a difficult distinction to parse as a matter of law.
Since the BBC is a government entitity the documentary could be construed as electioneering by a foreign government.
One of the ideological successes of the right is to depict everything that is publically owned as being part of the government.
Would you be so cavalier about the distinction if we were talking about Russian state media (for example) instead of British state media? It's a difficult distinction to parse as a matter of law.
Speaking for myself, if media owned by a foreign government, be it BBC, RT, VOA, or whatever, wants to produce something critical of another government, that should be no one's business but the producing government, and the people who choose to view it.
I guess Facebook and twitter can ban whoever they want from their respective platforms, but I personally don't see a strong moral imperative for it.
There is a pronounced tendency on the part of many Americans (not just GOP) to assume that the CBC, BBC, ABC, etc., are by nature the supine creatures of government, broadcasting from our respective local equivalents of Harare, which, to the consternation of the various governments, they are not.
There is a pronounced tendency on the part of many Americans (not just GOP) to assume that the CBC, BBC, ABC, etc., are by nature the supine creatures of government, broadcasting from our respective local equivalents of Harare, which, to the consternation of the various governments, they are not.
But it's hard to articulate that difference as a matter of law. "Aw c'mon, they're the BBC!" isn't really a distinction that can be made without making a lot of assumptions and carving out the kind of particular exceptions that are the bane of well-crafted legislation.
There is a pronounced tendency on the part of many Americans (not just GOP) to assume that the CBC, BBC, ABC, etc., are by nature the supine creatures of government, broadcasting from our respective local equivalents of Harare, which, to the consternation of the various governments, they are not.
From what I know, you're basically correct. Though I also know a few leftists(as opposed to liberal or centre-left people) who during the Iraq War thought that the BBC shoulda been called the Bush Blair Corporation, and have an equally dim view of the CBC's independence.
In fairness to that perspective, if journalists want to curry favour with the powers-that-be(in order to maintain their licensing fees or tax-funding) they're likely just going to self-censor, aka a chilling effect, rather than put the stuff on the air and let the government do the censorship after the fact. And self-censorship is not something the general public is likely to notice.
(Overall, though, I suspect the political bias of state-employed journalists reflects the viewpoint of the chattering class itself, rather than the government. The CBC went slightly gaga over the election of Barack Obama in 2008, even though it was well-known that PM Harper didn't much care for the guy.)
I'm not relying on anything so lazy as the "aw, c'mon" argument, though that is often (and dangerously) the default of a lot of the audience. Structurally (i.e., by act of Parliament) and as a matter of culture the public broadcasters are at arm's length, there are complaints bodies, ombudspersons, etc. That doesn't prevent the government of the day from using the purse strings in an attempt to influence the flavour of reportage. That is no different from the American context, just that the configuration is slightly different, in which the interests have a more corporate overlap, e.g., NBC's broadcasting of Trump's town hall. Now, there's some black mischief.
Curiously, both Liberal and Conservative governments have imposed funding cuts to the CBC, which I take as evidence as the CBC's equal-opportunity pissing off. Equally curiously, it's the more extreme Conservatives who call for its wholesale defunding, yet by my lazy Saturday morning count, of the journos who subsequently go into politics, including from the CBC, more are conservative than anything else.
Combined the difference between say, the BBC and RT, is pretty clear.
There is a pronounced tendency on the part of many Americans (not just GOP) to assume that the CBC, BBC, ABC, etc., are by nature the supine creatures of government, broadcasting from our respective local equivalents of Harare, which, to the consternation of the various governments, they are not.
Um, is this in reply to my inquiry about "C'mon"? If so, I'm really not seeing the connection. I didn't accuse you of doing anything that required an apology.
Was "the aw c'mon argument" meant as shorthand for a "common sense" defense of CBC, BBC etc? "Aw, c'mon, man, this is the beeb, we all know they're a public service, not just government toadies?"
@Lamb Chopped Perhaps my perception is more a reflection of my surprise at their opinions than anything else. I've known Americans "who should know better" who assume that the relationship between government and the state broadcaster is much more intimate than it is in fact. (In fact, I'd characterise it as a relationship based on suspicion and resentment on both sides.) As soon as they hear "state broadcaster" they assume "Echo of Moscow", or a watered down version. Again, this isn't based on a statistically valid sample, but my own surprise at some of the sources of some variety of this opinion, all the more surprising for its usual insouciance toward corporate ownership and its increasing concentration.
There is a pronounced tendency on the part of many Americans (not just GOP) to assume that the CBC, BBC, ABC, etc., are by nature the supine creatures of government, broadcasting from our respective local equivalents of Harare, which, to the consternation of the various governments, they are not.
I don’t believe many Americans give any thought at all to these things. Most would probably recognize “BBC” as the source of Monty Python and Downton Abbey, but think that ABC was an obsolete domestic broadcast network from the days before cable, and have no idea what CBC was (more would identify it as “complete blood count” than “Canadian Broadcasting Corporation”.)
As others have said, various governments have tried using the licence fee as a means of exerting control, some reckon with success. The following quote from the Charter gives the intention.
3. The independence of the BBC
(1) The BBC must be independent in all matters concerning the fulfilment of its Mission
and the promotion of the Public Purposes, particularly as regards editorial and
creative decisions, the times and manner in which its output and services are
supplied, and in the management of its affairs.
(2) Paragraph (1) is subject to any provision made by or under this Charter or the
Framework Agreement or otherwise by law.
The independence of the BBC can indeed be compromised by pressure on its finances. So far as the law in peacetime is concerned I don't recall any attempts to limit that independence by legislation.
It's very difficult to make the law of one country (say, American election law) dependent upon the current state of law in another country (e.g. the BBC's government charter).
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A lot of totalitarian governments are very good at mimicking the forms of democratic institutions for an appearance of legitimacy while ignoring those structures in practice. It would not surprise me at all if Russia Today had a similar independence clause in its organizational documents, and if making one country's laws dependent on the state of another country's laws is difficult, it's downright impossible to base them on unwritten de facto practices instead of de jure statute.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
All true. The best defence for the continuing independence of the BBC is to be found in the largely unwritten constitutional norms of our largely unwritten constitution. If the UK can learn anything from four years of Trump it is that you can't depend on constitutional norms to defend freedoms and the rule of law.
So far as the law in peacetime is concerned I don't recall any attempts to limit that independence by legislation
So how is it, then, that when war does kick in, the beeb can be required to ban the playing of certain songs on the air(eg. most notoriously Six Months In A Leaky Boat during the Falklands, but also a lot of stuff during the two Iraq conflicts)?
At first, I thought those might be general restrictions on all broadcasters, but if I'm understanding what I just read on the internet, these bans were specific to the BBC.
Did the independent journalists who run the BBC just decide on their own that they should help boost the national morale by ceasing airplay for those tunes?
The BBC is not an arm of the government. In fact the government has been threatening to look strongly into changing the charter if the BBC are not good boys and girls. We pay a licence fee. It is owned by us. The quality of BBC programming means that rival channels have to try and match the quality.
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) largest shareholder is Disney. It has always been a private company. The closest we have to the BBC here is the Public Broadcasting Corporation which started out with over 90% government funding but is now largely dependent on private donations. Some conservatives would like to kill it, but We The People keep it going.
It's very difficult to make the law of one country (say, American election law) dependent upon the current state of law in another country (e.g. the BBC's government charter).
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A lot of totalitarian governments are very good at mimicking the forms of democratic institutions for an appearance of legitimacy while ignoring those structures in practice. It would not surprise me at all if Russia Today had a similar independence clause in its organizational documents, and if making one country's laws dependent on the state of another country's laws is difficult, it's downright impossible to base them on unwritten de facto practices instead of de jure statute.
I understand the difficulty in distinguishing the BBC from RT from a legal perspective. The only way I can thing of doing it is to leave the decision to the Executive Govt and have a legislative mechanism for proscribing certain media organisations. But that brings its own problems.
The Chinese Communists refuse to accept that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (OZBC) is independent of Government. They are continually taking umbrage at criticism of China from the OZBC. At least they won't have to worry about it anymore, as they recently attempted to arrest the two remaining Australian journalists in China working for Australian outlets. Both were banned from leaving the country and fled to the consulates in their cities, and their return home had to be negotiated. There is another Australian Journalist in the country. She worked as a presenter on Chinese State Media, and is currently somewhere in the bowels of the Chinese "justice" system.
OZBC is a trenchant critic of Government. I can understand the mistake people unfamiliar with it might make, but it is a very important bulwark of our democracy. A large proportion of the political scandals that make the news are surfaced by OZBC journalists. They are always fighting budget cuts and dire threats from the Government of the day. Naturally, I am a massive fanboy.
OZBC is my own invention. We call it the ABC or Aunty.
It's very difficult to make the law of one country (say, American election law) dependent upon the current state of law in another country (e.g. the BBC's government charter).
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A lot of totalitarian governments are very good at mimicking the forms of democratic institutions for an appearance of legitimacy while ignoring those structures in practice. It would not surprise me at all if Russia Today had a similar independence clause in its organizational documents, and if making one country's laws dependent on the state of another country's laws is difficult, it's downright impossible to base them on unwritten de facto practices instead of de jure statute.
OZBC is my own invention. We call it the ABC or Aunty.
I like your new abbreviation(*). You should try to make that a thing.
(*) For a North American of my generation, "ABC" likely brings to mind bubbleheaded dramas and sitcoms, featuring jiggly bikini girls at every opportunity. (RIP Fred Silverman)
Downtown wasn’t BBC. That’s why there were adverts.
That doesn't exactly undermine my assertion that there aren't many Americans who give such things any thought at all (he observed self-servingly.)
My guess would be that most Americans associate BBC with Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and some of the stuff shown on Masterpiece Theatre.
(Not sure about that last one, since I never watched the show, but I would assume they showed some BBC stuff. Brideshead Revisited, probably their most famous UK import, was ITV, apparently.)
1) I was in fact referring to OZBC (I like that!), not the AmericanBCo.
2) Bear in mind that the majority of my American exposure was to academia (of a mostly conservative hue) and business. As I said in a post above responding to Lamb Chopped, I made no claim for the statistical soundness of my observations for the general population. Those with whom I dealt were quite aware of BBC, CBC, etc. I appreciate Lamb Chopped's differentiating "state broadcaster" from "state supported" but for many of my interlocutors that was a differentiation without a difference.
It should be read into the record that people who are active fans of the CBC(and I would guess the BBC as well) are often given to statements such as "The CBC reflects our values as Canadians", which could lead one to assume that the network is operating on a daily basis according to orders from the government. (Otherwise, how do you ensure that it consistently reflects Canadian values?)
Not that this is neccessarily the reason some Americans might think the CBC is state propaganda, just that Canadians themselves sometimes seem to think of it that way as well.
In my observation the BBC love to spend bandwidth bashing foreign government policies. They aren't the only national broadcaster in the world to do so, and it might not be done with a political aim, but the idea that it creates a diversion from the situation at home is hard to escape.
In my observation the BBC love to spend bandwidth bashing foreign government policies. They aren't the only national broadcaster in the world to do so, and it might not be done with a political aim, but the idea that it creates a diversion from the situation at home is hard to escape.
Not that I am at all doubting you, but would you be able to provide an example or two of this particular tendency? I'm just curious about how it plays out.
Just by way of elucidation, I was simply assuming that at election time, no US station would rebroadcast the programme for fear of being accused of bias. Nor would BBCWorld, I think.
Just by way of elucidation, I was simply assuming that at election time, no US station would rebroadcast the programme for fear of being accused of bias. Nor would BBCWorld, I think.
There’s no shortage of domestically-produced political criticism in the US media; this sounds like kind of a coals to Newcastle situation.
Not that I am at all doubting you, but would you be able to provide an example or two of this particular tendency? I'm just curious about how it plays out.
Here is an article (in French) from 2014 about 'French-bashing' which cites the BBC amongst other broadcasters. Go through anything written by the BBC's Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield and almost without exception, you'll see his take is a negative one.
I've noticed more than once how amid Covid, the media of countries facing a setback seem to devote space to how badly a neighbouring country is faring rather than analyse the local difficulty.
My guess would be that most Americans associate BBC with Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and some of the stuff shown on Masterpiece Theatre.
Yes, but also BBC World News America, although even they are slipping. And I'm afraid that their headline crawl, especially sports news, is practically unintelligible.
I'm sure foreign (government-connected) media would attract more ire than anything domestically produced.
Almost certainly. But Eirenist's original wording led me to think(incorrectly) he meant that it would actually be banned in the USA, simply as a result of being anti-Trump.
As for it just not being shown because of bias and/or foreign-origin, personally I wouldn't have really expected a Big 3 network to show a BBC doc on US politics anyway. I don't know if the networks would refuse to show it on the basis of bias; MSNBC certainly doesn't shirk from that kind of reportage. In any case, I'm sure it could be posted on YouTube and linked from there, no problem.
I'm sure foreign (government-connected) media would attract more ire than anything domestically produced.
Why would it attract anything at all? What makes you think anyone in the US cares about what the BBC thinks about the Trump administration?
In the early 1980s, a film about nuclear war produced by the National Film Board Of Canada, If You Love This Planet, was labeled by the US government as foreign-propaganda or some such, and subject to whatever conditions applied, in order to be allowed distribution in the USA.
So yeah, these sorts of things can happen. To what end, I have no idea, since the film was still shown in the USA and even won an Oscar, not to mention there were American-made films with a similar message, at least one funded by a government agency, showing at the same time.
I think the Reagan administration just figured they had to show their disapproval somehow, and since they had more control over American borders than American theatres, they slapped the label on the film before allowing distribution.
But unless the BBC doc was being exported for theatrical screenings(unlikely), I don't think the government could do much about it.
The US Government doesn't have to take any action. The TV companies perhaps don't want to lose half their viewing public.
The existence of Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting argues against the idea that for-profit media companies won't take partisan positions for fear of offending half their potential audience.
It should be read into the record that people who are active fans of the CBC(and I would guess the BBC as well) are often given to statements such as "The CBC reflects our values as Canadians", which could lead one to assume that the network is operating on a daily basis according to orders from the government. (Otherwise, how do you ensure that it consistently reflects Canadian values?)
That's a hell of a leap.
How do you get the idea that the only way of "ensuring" that a broadcaster reflects your community values is to have your government dictate to it? Can you not imagine a sense of community that exists outside of government?
Thank you for the clarification about ABC, I had realized the other networks that were mentioned were public or government-sponsored networks. Silly me, as an American, I found it incongruous for our private network to be mentioned and responded as I did without thinking there might be another network with the same abbreviation.
The BBC is not an arm of the government. In fact the government has been threatening to look strongly into changing the charter if the BBC are not good boys and girls. We pay a licence fee. It is owned by us. The quality of BBC programming means that rival channels have to try and match the quality.
I think this argument is one of those often unquestioned bits of British exceptionalism that obscures and infantilises debate around the BBC. There is nothing to enforce any particular reading of the BBC charter other than unwritten norms -- and as Barnabas rightly points out we are in an era of norms being ignored.
The history of the BBC is one of siding with the government against the public during the General Strike - including preferring to broadcast the address of the then Archishop of Westminster (over the Archbishop of Canterbury) because he would condemn the strike as a sin against God - a long history of interference by the security services, the more recent revolving door between the BBC and the Conservative Party and fairly hamfisted attempts at boosterism that would be condemned as propaganda were any other organisation to do it. The kindest reading would be AJP Taylor's quote:
"(Reith) managed to preserve the technical independence of the BBC. By suppressing news which the government did not want published. This set a pattern for the future; the vaunted independence of the BBC was secure so long as it was not exercised"
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
I'm with chrisstyles re norms. The norm for investigative journalism used to be a search for the best available version of the truth. Ratings, ownership, advertising and political pressures have seriously watered don that norm. It now seem to me to depend on the personal integrity of the journalists and those who give them freedom to research and express.
The pragmatist in me tells me that the best you can hope for are journalists of integrity who know how to play the survival game without getting too bent out of shape.
The BBC is not an arm of the government. In fact the government has been threatening to look strongly into changing the charter if the BBC are not good boys and girls. We pay a licence fee. It is owned by us. The quality of BBC programming means that rival channels have to try and match the quality.
I think this argument is one of those often unquestioned bits of British exceptionalism that obscures and infantilises debate around the BBC. There is nothing to enforce any particular reading of the BBC charter other than unwritten norms -- and as Barnabas rightly points out we are in an era of norms being ignored.
The history of the BBC is one of siding with the government against the public during the General Strike - including preferring to broadcast the address of the then Archishop of Westminster (over the Archbishop of Canterbury) because he would condemn the strike as a sin against God - a long history of interference by the security services, the more recent revolving door between the BBC and the Conservative Party and fairly hamfisted attempts at boosterism that would be condemned as propaganda were any other organisation to do it. The kindest reading would be AJP Taylor's quote:
"(Reith) managed to preserve the technical independence of the BBC. By suppressing news which the government did not want published. This set a pattern for the future; the vaunted independence of the BBC was secure so long as it was not exercised"
The BBC claims it is Independent in news, trying to be equal to both sides. Both side of the political debate claim is he BBC is pro the other side so it seems they are doing something right. As you probably guessed I am a fan of the BBC.
Having watched the main TV channels in the US I had to turn it to PBS. Far too many adds. We watched a game show where they went to adds just after the quiz had finished and came back for the he presentation of the prize and the credits. No wonder people channel surf.
Comments
Since the BBC is a government entitity the documentary could be construed as electioneering by a foreign government.
Would you be so cavalier about the distinction if we were talking about Russian state media (for example) instead of British state media? It's a difficult distinction to parse as a matter of law.
Speaking for myself, if media owned by a foreign government, be it BBC, RT, VOA, or whatever, wants to produce something critical of another government, that should be no one's business but the producing government, and the people who choose to view it.
I guess Facebook and twitter can ban whoever they want from their respective platforms, but I personally don't see a strong moral imperative for it.
But it's hard to articulate that difference as a matter of law. "Aw c'mon, they're the BBC!" isn't really a distinction that can be made without making a lot of assumptions and carving out the kind of particular exceptions that are the bane of well-crafted legislation.
From what I know, you're basically correct. Though I also know a few leftists(as opposed to liberal or centre-left people) who during the Iraq War thought that the BBC shoulda been called the Bush Blair Corporation, and have an equally dim view of the CBC's independence.
In fairness to that perspective, if journalists want to curry favour with the powers-that-be(in order to maintain their licensing fees or tax-funding) they're likely just going to self-censor, aka a chilling effect, rather than put the stuff on the air and let the government do the censorship after the fact. And self-censorship is not something the general public is likely to notice.
(Overall, though, I suspect the political bias of state-employed journalists reflects the viewpoint of the chattering class itself, rather than the government. The CBC went slightly gaga over the election of Barack Obama in 2008, even though it was well-known that PM Harper didn't much care for the guy.)
Curiously, both Liberal and Conservative governments have imposed funding cuts to the CBC, which I take as evidence as the CBC's equal-opportunity pissing off. Equally curiously, it's the more extreme Conservatives who call for its wholesale defunding, yet by my lazy Saturday morning count, of the journos who subsequently go into politics, including from the CBC, more are conservative than anything else.
Combined the difference between say, the BBC and RT, is pretty clear.
Just for clarification, what do you mean by the "aw, c'mon argument", in the context of discussing state broadcasters?
Is there? I hadn't noticed it.
Um, is this in reply to my inquiry about "C'mon"? If so, I'm really not seeing the connection. I didn't accuse you of doing anything that required an apology.
Was "the aw c'mon argument" meant as shorthand for a "common sense" defense of CBC, BBC etc? "Aw, c'mon, man, this is the beeb, we all know they're a public service, not just government toadies?"
As others have said, various governments have tried using the licence fee as a means of exerting control, some reckon with success. The following quote from the Charter gives the intention.
The independence of the BBC can indeed be compromised by pressure on its finances. So far as the law in peacetime is concerned I don't recall any attempts to limit that independence by legislation.
Two observations:
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quote...
So far as the law in peacetime is concerned I don't recall any attempts to limit that independence by legislation
So how is it, then, that when war does kick in, the beeb can be required to ban the playing of certain songs on the air(eg. most notoriously Six Months In A Leaky Boat during the Falklands, but also a lot of stuff during the two Iraq conflicts)?
At first, I thought those might be general restrictions on all broadcasters, but if I'm understanding what I just read on the internet, these bans were specific to the BBC.
Did the independent journalists who run the BBC just decide on their own that they should help boost the national morale by ceasing airplay for those tunes?
I think the poster was refering to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
I understand the difficulty in distinguishing the BBC from RT from a legal perspective. The only way I can thing of doing it is to leave the decision to the Executive Govt and have a legislative mechanism for proscribing certain media organisations. But that brings its own problems.
The Chinese Communists refuse to accept that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (OZBC) is independent of Government. They are continually taking umbrage at criticism of China from the OZBC. At least they won't have to worry about it anymore, as they recently attempted to arrest the two remaining Australian journalists in China working for Australian outlets. Both were banned from leaving the country and fled to the consulates in their cities, and their return home had to be negotiated. There is another Australian Journalist in the country. She worked as a presenter on Chinese State Media, and is currently somewhere in the bowels of the Chinese "justice" system.
OZBC is a trenchant critic of Government. I can understand the mistake people unfamiliar with it might make, but it is a very important bulwark of our democracy. A large proportion of the political scandals that make the news are surfaced by OZBC journalists. They are always fighting budget cuts and dire threats from the Government of the day. Naturally, I am a massive fanboy.
OZBC is my own invention. We call it the ABC or Aunty.
I like your new abbreviation(*). You should try to make that a thing.
(*) For a North American of my generation, "ABC" likely brings to mind bubbleheaded dramas and sitcoms, featuring jiggly bikini girls at every opportunity. (RIP Fred Silverman)
My guess would be that most Americans associate BBC with Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and some of the stuff shown on Masterpiece Theatre.
(Not sure about that last one, since I never watched the show, but I would assume they showed some BBC stuff. Brideshead Revisited, probably their most famous UK import, was ITV, apparently.)
2) Bear in mind that the majority of my American exposure was to academia (of a mostly conservative hue) and business. As I said in a post above responding to Lamb Chopped, I made no claim for the statistical soundness of my observations for the general population. Those with whom I dealt were quite aware of BBC, CBC, etc. I appreciate Lamb Chopped's differentiating "state broadcaster" from "state supported" but for many of my interlocutors that was a differentiation without a difference.
Not that this is neccessarily the reason some Americans might think the CBC is state propaganda, just that Canadians themselves sometimes seem to think of it that way as well.
Not that I am at all doubting you, but would you be able to provide an example or two of this particular tendency? I'm just curious about how it plays out.
I've noticed more than once how amid Covid, the media of countries facing a setback seem to devote space to how badly a neighbouring country is faring rather than analyse the local difficulty.
Yes, but also BBC World News America, although even they are slipping. And I'm afraid that their headline crawl, especially sports news, is practically unintelligible.
Almost certainly. But Eirenist's original wording led me to think(incorrectly) he meant that it would actually be banned in the USA, simply as a result of being anti-Trump.
As for it just not being shown because of bias and/or foreign-origin, personally I wouldn't have really expected a Big 3 network to show a BBC doc on US politics anyway. I don't know if the networks would refuse to show it on the basis of bias; MSNBC certainly doesn't shirk from that kind of reportage. In any case, I'm sure it could be posted on YouTube and linked from there, no problem.
In the early 1980s, a film about nuclear war produced by the National Film Board Of Canada, If You Love This Planet, was labeled by the US government as foreign-propaganda or some such, and subject to whatever conditions applied, in order to be allowed distribution in the USA.
So yeah, these sorts of things can happen. To what end, I have no idea, since the film was still shown in the USA and even won an Oscar, not to mention there were American-made films with a similar message, at least one funded by a government agency, showing at the same time.
I think the Reagan administration just figured they had to show their disapproval somehow, and since they had more control over American borders than American theatres, they slapped the label on the film before allowing distribution.
But unless the BBC doc was being exported for theatrical screenings(unlikely), I don't think the government could do much about it.
The existence of Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting argues against the idea that for-profit media companies won't take partisan positions for fear of offending half their potential audience.
The reason that program is inaccessible in the US is because of the BBC:
“BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.”
That's a hell of a leap.
How do you get the idea that the only way of "ensuring" that a broadcaster reflects your community values is to have your government dictate to it? Can you not imagine a sense of community that exists outside of government?
This assumes that any one TV company's viewing public is representative of the nation as a whole. Which is patently false these days.
Carry on.
I think this argument is one of those often unquestioned bits of British exceptionalism that obscures and infantilises debate around the BBC. There is nothing to enforce any particular reading of the BBC charter other than unwritten norms -- and as Barnabas rightly points out we are in an era of norms being ignored.
The history of the BBC is one of siding with the government against the public during the General Strike - including preferring to broadcast the address of the then Archishop of Westminster (over the Archbishop of Canterbury) because he would condemn the strike as a sin against God - a long history of interference by the security services, the more recent revolving door between the BBC and the Conservative Party and fairly hamfisted attempts at boosterism that would be condemned as propaganda were any other organisation to do it. The kindest reading would be AJP Taylor's quote:
The pragmatist in me tells me that the best you can hope for are journalists of integrity who know how to play the survival game without getting too bent out of shape.
Having watched the main TV channels in the US I had to turn it to PBS. Far too many adds. We watched a game show where they went to adds just after the quiz had finished and came back for the he presentation of the prize and the credits. No wonder people channel surf.