Owen, Catrin
(2020)
British Battered Corporation. How is the BBC portrayed in UK national newspapers?
PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.
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Abstract
This study uses mixed methods research to examine how the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) method of funding is represented in UK national newspapers. The licence fee (paid for by everyone who watches television) provides the BBC with a guaranteed funding stream, in contrast with a struggling press facing declining print newspaper sales and subsequently declining profits. Owners of prominent newspapers have publicly condemned the notion of licence fee-funding and accused the BBC of ‘dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market’ (Murdoch 2009). However, so far, there has been little systematic analysis of how UK national newspapers report on the BBC and no specific literature on newspaper reporting of the licence fee. This study therefore provides unique analysis of how the licence fee is represented in newspaper reporting, focussing on print coverage of four critical periods within the recent history of the Corporation’s funding model. Its results are drawn from a quantitative analysis of 646 UK newspaper articles, followed by a detailed qualitative analysis of the language in a selection of these articles, using Critical Discourse Analysis. The quantitative analysis revealed the presence of conflicting groups within the newspaper coverage of the licence fee (e.g. the BBC, the government, the licence fee payer). Qualitative analysis was then employed to investigate how these conflicts manifested themselves in themes and discourses. Analysis found two contradictory discourses were operationalised by newspapers. The first discourse, ‘tyranny of the minority’ suggested the BBC was elitist and in opposition to a majority of licence fee payers. The second, ‘competition is king’ advocated that the BBC, fuelled by the licence fee, was an aggressive imposition on commercial media companies. These discourses were invoked flexibly and contradictorily across the articles to ideologically criticise the BBC. Overall the study found that the self-interest of newspapers as businesses superseded publications’ political leanings and the licence fee was blamed for hindering the commercial ambitions of newspapers, building upon the work of authors who have considered newspaper reporting of the BBC (Thomas and Hindman 2011; Petley 2015; Freedman 2015; Rusbridger 2018). This research, therefore, contributes to broader debates about the nature of the UK national press, competing methods of media funding and attitudes towards public service media at a time when the BBC is the subject of intense scrutiny in Britain.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Apr 2020 14:16 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2023 23:57 |
| DOI: | 10.17638/03079735 |
| Supervisors: |
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| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3079735 |
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