The BBC claim they can detect if you're watching, but this is of course, bullshit. The TV receives broadcast media - it doesn't send anything out. The only way they can catch you is in the act, if you leave your blinds or curtains open and they can see the TV playing live.
The main tactic they use to make people pay the license is constant intimidation and threats. There is a form you can fill out to clearly state that you do not use a TV for any of the purposes which require a license fee, but this has little use as the bullies will still come knocking even if you fill it out.
The main thing people need is awareness that they do not need to pay the license fee to merely own a TV for watching Netflix or anything not covered by the license. If one of their cronies comes knocking, you tell them to get lost. If they come again, threaten to report them for harassment. If they take you to court, you explain that you don't use the TV for any of the covered purposes and the BBC pays your court costs and leaves you alone after that.
Old school CRT TVs and monitors most definitely rebroadcast what they are displaying [1]. Modern TVs still do, but not at the same power levels. I would guess that a tempest attack on a modern TV is very difficult. I don't know if the BBC has ever used any of these techniques. But it's not impossible.
This has never been the case.
"Both-sidesism" doesn't necessarily result in bias, but it does make the content worse; having leftwing nonsense and rightwing nonsense in the same show will result in an equal weight of complaints from both sides, but that doesn't mean the public has been well-informed.
Apparently people who present political programmes sometimes have political views and differences of opinions, and sometimes get hired by partisan bodies. Who knew? FWIW the current Director of Communications for the Conservative Party in Number 10 is a guy who was previously employed by an outspokenly Labour-supporting tabloid to chase round previous Conservative PMs dressed as a chicken during election campaigns. And the BBC's most outspokenly conservative journalist Andrew Neil is someone the left were desperate to see interview the Conservative party leader in the run up to the election on the basis they expected Neil to absolutely savage him.
Indeed but it was because all the other party leaders had submitted to his interviewing and it was seen as blatantly unfair that someone with a track record of, let's be nice, wildly inaccurate and misleading statements should be able to skip the process.
It doesn't matter who the Conservative party have as their director of comms, it matters that there's a revolving door between a state broadcaster and the political orgnisations that they are menat to be covering.
As a British person living in the US, this is absolute nonsense.
Roger Ailes used his television network to aggressively present a one-sided view that demonised progressivism, and fed baby-boomers a steady diet of Republican talking points every evening.
The BBC has done nothing remotely similar – but it makes a very convenient punching bag for supporters of the previous opposition leader – a man who had the ardent support of the party faithful, but who was incapable of translating that into national appeal.
I will never forget the way the BBC "covered" Corbyn, with the heavy handed propaganda techniques and constant repetition of patently ridiculous smears. Meanwhile, that BoJo prick had his gaffes covered over, such as [1].
I'll never forget how the BBC "covered" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and David Kelly.
The original article mentions ever so briefly how the BBC "covered" the troubles - it was a constant stream of one sided filth for decades. To this day, coverage of those years remains sheer propaganda, though with less naked venom and foaming at the mouth.
So, when people write articles like this implying the BBC walks a tight rope of bias, my stomach churns. Like the Guardian, they never deserved their reputation and have gotten tremendously worse in the last decades.
[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-boris-joh...
Are you serious? There was a whole government-sponsored inquiry over this that kneecapped the BBC basically because it had covered the intelligence that led up to the war critically.
Much like how the BBC has "covered" torture, collateral murder, and the likes which Assange and Snowden revealed - better than the tabloids, and not nearly good enough.
And re: whether he was murdered - pretty much everyone who knew David Kelly, including his wife, called it a suicide because there was absolutely no evidence that his death was anything but a suicide.
He gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the 15th and 16th of July, and was found dead on the 17th.
...
> One of the witnesses who gave evidence to Hutton was David Broucher, the UK's permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament. In 2002 or 2003 he had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded; Kelly had replied "I will probably be found dead in the woods".
Don't remember BBC making much of a deal of that quote.
His wife was probably scared shitless and in no space to fight. And there were many who didn't find the official line credible including doctors, the former leader of the Conservative Party, and MP Norman Baker, among many others. Try checking your own facts before calling people wrong.
The idea that you know more about David Kelly's state of mind at the time than his own family is sort of galling.
Thanks for the comment. As someone from outside the UK I know very little about the BBC. Could you elaborate on your views regarding The Guardian?
The Guardian has come under fire recently for having a pretty anti-trans editorial board. At the same time, it's still one of the more left-leaning broadsheets in the UK.
The Guardian being fake left wing might not be the view of the average Briton, but Chomsky and Klein would agree. The average Briton voted for Brexit then Googled what it meant after they won. Also, I'm not British.
I like the way that slipped in there. Is the question of bias undefinable? Or can we define it as "The person who was in charge of editing the BBC's 2010 news coverage went on to be the Director of Communications for Number 10". Or maybe "The presenter of the BBC's flagship toptical debate programme has a history of making factually inaccurate statements about the the Labour party", or "The BBC repeatedly appoints key Conservative journalists to flagship programmes".
I mean, this isn't undefinable, it's very easily definable. For those in the US who may not understand this, imagine you had a state broadcaster funded by taxes, and it had been putting on shows presented by Roger Ailes.
I mean it's really quite basic, people shouldn't be going back and forth from political positions to the independent state broadcast. The state broadcaster should have an open and accountable procedure to deal with factual issues. Neither of those are true, and these systemic issues don't have a neutral political outcome.