Post by Teddy Bear on Nov 11, 2013 22:49:28 GMT
The BBC is ‘destroying’ local newspapers by using its taxpayer-funded dominance to squeeze out competition, Theresa May has warned.
The Home Secretary condemned the BBC for using the licence fee to fund websites in direct competition with regional and national newspapers.
And she warned that as papers close, fewer sources of news will become ‘dangerous to the health of democratic politics’.
Mrs May is the latest senior Tory to publicly criticise the BBC, stepping up pressure on the Corporation over its management and spending.
She said local newspapers are having ‘a particularly hard time’, which is being made worse by the ‘BBC's dominant position on the internet and its ability to subsidise the provision of internet news using the licence fee’.
‘This makes it enormously difficult for local newspapers to compete. If the BBC can, as they do, provide all the locally significant news, what is left to motivate the local media to buy a paper?
‘It's destroying local newspapers and could eventually happen to national newspapers as well.’
You can read more about this story here, as well as on the Telegraph website here.
But I think the main elements of this story is best covered by this Telegraph View article which identifies the concerns for most of us.
Curb the corporation
The BBC’s reach and power have changed everything, because it has been able to draw upon a guaranteed pot of money
By Telegraph View
Politicians are adept at telling their audiences what they want to hear and then failing to follow through on what they have said. We trust this is not true of Theresa May. Addressing the annual conference of the Society of Editors yesterday, the Home Secretary made several important points about the impact that the BBC’s presence on the internet is having on the newspaper industry. She criticised the corporation’s ability to subsidise its online coverage through the licence fee, thereby placing it in direct, and unfair, competition with commercial publishers. Moreover, she correctly identified the dangers that this posed not just to the future of newspapers, both locally and nationally, but to democracy itself.
We could not agree more. The plurality of British national newspapers, representing every opinion across the spectrum, is one of this country’s great strengths. Locally, the press has held councils and other institutions to account, while providing readers with informed and good quality journalism.
But the BBC’s reach and power have changed everything, because it has been able to draw upon a guaranteed pot of money in order to establish an all-encompassing news website that has taken away their readers at a time of financial hardship for newspapers. This is not a hard-luck story, but a simple statement of fact. As Mrs May said, this process “is destroying local newspapers and could eventually happen to national newspapers as well”.
Now that she has identified the problem, the Home Secretary should recognise that the solution is in her and her colleagues’ hands. We question whether the BBC should be funded by a licence fee at all. But for this arrangement to continue, it should be a condition that the revenues are not used to crush the life out of local newspapers and other publications.
The BBC’s reach and power have changed everything, because it has been able to draw upon a guaranteed pot of money
By Telegraph View
Politicians are adept at telling their audiences what they want to hear and then failing to follow through on what they have said. We trust this is not true of Theresa May. Addressing the annual conference of the Society of Editors yesterday, the Home Secretary made several important points about the impact that the BBC’s presence on the internet is having on the newspaper industry. She criticised the corporation’s ability to subsidise its online coverage through the licence fee, thereby placing it in direct, and unfair, competition with commercial publishers. Moreover, she correctly identified the dangers that this posed not just to the future of newspapers, both locally and nationally, but to democracy itself.
We could not agree more. The plurality of British national newspapers, representing every opinion across the spectrum, is one of this country’s great strengths. Locally, the press has held councils and other institutions to account, while providing readers with informed and good quality journalism.
But the BBC’s reach and power have changed everything, because it has been able to draw upon a guaranteed pot of money in order to establish an all-encompassing news website that has taken away their readers at a time of financial hardship for newspapers. This is not a hard-luck story, but a simple statement of fact. As Mrs May said, this process “is destroying local newspapers and could eventually happen to national newspapers as well”.
Now that she has identified the problem, the Home Secretary should recognise that the solution is in her and her colleagues’ hands. We question whether the BBC should be funded by a licence fee at all. But for this arrangement to continue, it should be a condition that the revenues are not used to crush the life out of local newspapers and other publications.