I can forgive BBC News Reporter Daniel Sandford much as his parents were among my father’s oldest and best friends. But a man earning a six-figure salary thanks to our license fee last night took to twitter, spreading patently fake news and thus making the case to #DefundTheBBC even stronger.
Daniel kicked off with the claim that the BBC license is great value as Netflix costs more at £13.99 a month. The BBC license is £157.50 but if you pay monthly you will be charged £13.12.
Someone immediately pointed out that Netflix can be accessed for less than that to which Sandford doubled down with a tweet, which now seems to have disappeared, stating that folks soon will be paying £13.99. There is no evidence for that and it is dishonest to make that suggestion. What Sandford should have said is that Netflix operates a range of pricing plans from £5.99 to £13.99 pcm so most customers pay less than the BBC license fee. His original tweet was simply #fakenews.
But the other point that Daniel cannot seem to get his head around is that you do not have to pay for Netflix. It does not force you to pay for its services whether you use them or not, it does not threaten folks – usually the poor and the elderly – with bailiffs and jail in order to pay the bloated salaries of staffers such as, er…Daniel Sandford. Mr Sandford seems to think that he has a right to his bloated salary and, somehow, we should be obliged, if not honoured, to pay for it.
There are commercial alternatives to all of the BBC’s radio and TV offerings. If Sandford is confident that the BBC offers a unique and much demanded service, he should have no concerns about going to a subscription or advertising model and fighting it out with the private sector. Come on Daniel, what is stopping you?
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