> 2. Most people think scrapping it is a political move, because there are weird power dynamics between Downing Street, the execs in charge of BBC News and the rest of the BBC who seem to have problems with the News division and their friendliness with Downing Street and the PM in particular.
The context here is that the BBC is legally bound to be politically neutral. The problem is that in this modern partisan environment both sides think the BBC is horrendously biased. Tory's think it's full of left wing Londoners (not entirely untrue) and Labour think it's full of upper-middle class private school kids (again not entirely untrue).
With the current political divide no one can agree what politically neutral means and criticising the BBC is an easy politic win, as it's easy to 'other'.
Previously BBC was viewed in a similar way to the NHS, a British institution and one of our greatest exports as a country. Trying to shut it down or limit it was politically dangerous. Nowadays less folk are fussed,either they agree it's biased or they're like me and haven't watched it (bar Christmas trips home) since leaving home.
Problem is not that BBC is biased, but doing horrible job and divides society.
During brexit referendum it would be very easy to debunk exiter's arguments (£350 million a week for the NHS etc). BBC instead called people racist, supremacist and priviliged. People voted for brexit just to spite BBC.
If they did vote for it just to spite the BBC, it was at least partially off the back of the BBC giving a huge amount of time to those nonsense arguments.
The context here is that the BBC is legally bound to be politically neutral. The problem is that in this modern partisan environment both sides think the BBC is horrendously biased. Tory's think it's full of left wing Londoners (not entirely untrue) and Labour think it's full of upper-middle class private school kids (again not entirely untrue).
With the current political divide no one can agree what politically neutral means and criticising the BBC is an easy politic win, as it's easy to 'other'.
Previously BBC was viewed in a similar way to the NHS, a British institution and one of our greatest exports as a country. Trying to shut it down or limit it was politically dangerous. Nowadays less folk are fussed,either they agree it's biased or they're like me and haven't watched it (bar Christmas trips home) since leaving home.