Labour’s response to the BBC license debate

The Tories have gotton so excited about the idea of decriminalising the BBC license fee, that it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that they see this as an opportunity to do down the national broadcaster. Labour needs to have a response, or else the debate will be guided by those who wish to see television controlled by press barons and oligarchs.

Apparently 10% of cases before the magistrates’ courts are for evasion of the license fee. On the face of it this sounds extraordinary, but before we accept this figure on face value, we should first recognise that it came from the Magistrates Association, a body with a history empire building.

In recent years they have campaigned for fewer cases to be sent up to the crown court for sentencing, for themselves and not the police to give cautions to offenders, and for the abolition of fixed penalty notices, in order that they can have a monopoly over fines.

Palestine and the Press

The problem with the Gaza disaster appeal video is that it focused itself on the Palestinians as victims rather than being a call for peace. This is not new. The media’s focus on the Palestinians as victims has been a considerable part of the problem over the last 30 years.

During the First Intifada, when children threw stones at Israeli soldiers, pictures were beamed around the world and it became the biggest media story of the day, but the effect on both Israel and the Palestinians was disastrous. The need of western-world television viewers and magazine readers was to share the suffering of a small people, but children in the West Bank and Gaza found themselves with a choice of going to school or going to where the western press scrum were gathered and be a hero before cameras that told their story to the whole world. Perhaps a billion dollars worth of media was made out of that story, by Reuters, AP and the BBC, but I doubt if the Palestinians received a single penny of that money.