Boris Johnson: BBC 'bias' slammed by Wootton

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Calls for the TV licence fee to be scrapped have been flowing since Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the next announcement on the levy “will be the last”. Boris Johnson was reportedly told Cabinet he was “right behind this” idea. Fighting back against this notion, the broadcaster has launched a new campaign painting itself as “our BBC”.

It claims “the BBC is something that belongs to all of us”.

But this, according to writer Janet Daley, has just made the corporation look worse.

Writing in the Telegraph, Mrs Daley wrote: ”This opus is obviously designed to be hilarious, proffering the subtext ‘we don’t really take ourselves too seriously’ when, in fact, what it reveals is that the BBC sees itself as a sacrosanct mainstay of British identity.

“Whatever you may have been tempted to conclude, it insists, we are not an out-of-touch, self-regarding purveyor of our own particular worldview which regards much public opinion as beneath contempt.

“Listen to what we are saying now about how we view ourselves and, above all, be aware that we cannot carry out this mission without your participation.”

In a damning verdict for the broadcaster, she said it has become “insular and enclosed”.

For Mrs Daley, “the BBC isn’t yours – it’s theirs”.

Campaign group Defund The BBC went one step further, branding the campaign “outright offensive”.

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It said: “The BBC’s self-promotion campaign is not only arrogant, it’s outright offensive.

“No matter how many gold stars the Beeb gives itself, it doesn’t change the fact that Brits are sick of its virtue signalling and don’t want to be forced to pay for it!”

Many of the group’s followers expressed their support for the broadcaster to be defunded.

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Twitter user jim beam 58 wrote: “A bloated sense of self regard seems to be spread across large parts of the media.

“The BBC certainly wallows in its own sense of self importance – all done on money extorted from those who wish to watch live TV, of course.”

Legsby added: “Blowing its own trumpet is about the only thing the BBC is really good at these days.”

Even former BBC grandees have questioned the future of the licence fee’s existence, with Andrew Marr calling for it to be scrapped “in the long term” and David Dimbleby suggesting it is, as it stands, “manifestly unfair”.

Mr Dimbleby last month suggested the levy be replaced by a system based on the council tax rate bands, where “those in band [D] would pay the most for possession of a TV set and those in band [A] the least”.

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