Tilting at aerials
A legal challenge to the BBC's empire
WHY should the BBC be so coddled? Whether or not you watch its programmes, if you have a television set you must pay the £112 licence fee, or risk a fine. Tories find its news output stiflingly Blairite. The high-minded think it has gone irredeemably down-market. Others object to its extravagant commercial ambitions. The rural lobby has been thinking of a mass boycott in protest at the corporation's supposedly urban, lefty bias. Now a journalist on the Sunday Times, Jonathan Miller, has spotted a legal loophole in the Beeb's defences.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Tilting at aerials”
From the October 26th 2002 edition
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