You are quite right in that the government doesnt have day to day control over. That doesnt mean it isnt a state broadcater.
It's a state broadcaster through its funding mechanism. So in effect its a state broadcaster without a state. Which means that the editorial control is in the hands of a few management executives, journalists and editors.
That means there is less acountability at the BBC, compared to to a noraml state broadcaster (assuming its a democractic state), in which you can vote out the government.
What you seem to be implying and i've had this same conversation with many people, is that a bunch of leftwing/liberal individuals are independent minded.
This is plain nonsense. The problem with the BBC is that currentyly their agenda is being driven by a small group of people, who have an incredible amount of power - all paid by a tax on each and every tv in the country. Regardless of whether you agree wiht this left wing, anti war, anti American agenda.
Its like a stalinist media organ that propagates a a minoity view as if it is the will of the majority. It's plainly not and this is why the BBC is causing so much concern amonst people like myself.
REgards,
Coldcall
I certainly didn't mean to suggest this broader conclusion. My point was solely concerned with precision of language in the use (not, originally on this thread, by you) of the phrase 'state-run'. When you say that an entity B (in this case a broadcaster) is 'run' by an entity A (in this case a government or state) you imply that A has continuous, direct control over everything B does. That's what the transitive verb 'to run' means in this context. Such is self-evidently the case with the broadcast media of a totalitarian state, which unambiguously operate as the state's propaganda arm and which are staffed by state officials. Such is self-evidently
not the case, however, with the BBC, which has the freedom, frequently exercised, to broadcast views highly critical of government, and to act in other ways which government may find uncomfortable, difficult, or offensive.
State-influenced, by all means, in the same way that many other British public bodies, with their irritatingly messy constitutions, are state-influenced. But state-run, no.
Incidentally, I'm old enough to remember the near-paranoid conviction of Harold Wilson, the socialist Prime Minister of the mid-1960s, that the BBC was a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get him. A little ironic in the light of recent events.