The head of the National Union of Journalists on saving the BBC:

Broadcasting is in
crisis. Today the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson will announce
the cutting of thousands of jobs across the corporation. His
announcement comes a week after a government-backed inquiry floated the
idea of scrapping the licence fee, thereby threatening the BBC’s
universality.

Getting rid of that pernicious and regressive tax which is the licence fee sounds like a good idea to me.

Experience shows that
greater commercialisation delivers not better quality and more choice
but conformity, less choice and fewer jobs.

Really, does it? There was a day when the BBC was the only TV and radio broadcaster in the country. There are now a number of such. Has employment gone up or down? More or less choice? More or less conformity? If you really think that 1950s TV was better I can send you some tapes you know.

At a time when hundreds of commercial operators are vying to cut costs and bundle high-spending audiences to advertisers,

Apparently this is a bad thing. Hundreds of companies looking for an audience….thus providing hundreds of choices. Who would have thought it eh?

The future of the best broadcasting system in the world is at stake.

Err, no. The future of a few hundred, possibly even a few thousand, of your union member’s jobs are at risk. This is not the same as the end of civilisation.