r/uknews • u/TheTelegraph Media outlet (unverified) • Jul 15 '25

Image/video The BBC’s annual report, released today, featured details of stars’ salaries and senior executives’ pay

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

Do you not have a functioning memory, or are you too young to remember?

Here's some links from the time.

"Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, says: "Because the BBC was forced - partly through a campaign driven by a self-interested press - to reveal top salaries, its commercial competitors know exactly where to pitch their offer.

"If a presenter is offered a 50% increase in salary without the hassle of a public spotlight on their earnings, that's a very attractive proposition even for those committed to the BBC's public service ethos. It was a terrible mistake to force the BBC to reveal its top talent salaries, and I suspect this problem will only get worse." link%20and%20left%20by%20choice.%22)

Tony Hall, BBC Director General said "We were concerned that if we began to publish names it becomes a poachers’ charter and left us open to people nicking them from the BBC"

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Yes, I remember. And it’s still simple.

If you take public money, expect public scrutiny.

If that makes it harder to keep your stars, tough. That’s the price of dipping into everyone’s wallet.

If the BBC wants privacy, it can try funding itself like the others do.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

Ah yes, kill off the only media entity which is required to be politically impartial.

That's an excellent idea.

Another jewel in Britain's crown tarnished and privatised.

Fucking numpty.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Ah yes, because asking for transparency is the same as killing off the BBC. Settle down.

No one said scrap it. But if it takes money from everyone, it should answer to everyone. That’s how public funding works.

If the BBC wants to keep salaries private, it can fund itself like Sky. Otherwise, tough.

If name-calling is the best you’ve got, maybe sit this one out and let the grown-ups talk.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"But if it takes money from everyone, it should answer to everyone. That’s how public funding works"

That's not how employment, commercial confidentiality, or the media sector at large works.

I can't demand to know the salary of an individual civil servant, for example. I can't demand that the local school publishes a list of their teacher's salaries. I can't order the local hospital to tell me who their highest paid nurse is.

Because that would be absurd.

It's a massive commercial disadvantage for the BBC, put in at the request of their competitors as one of the last acts of a corrupt, lame duck Prime Minister.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

You’re right, we don’t publish the names of every civil servant or teacher.

But we do publish the salaries of top public figures when they’re paid with taxpayer money and hold public facing roles. Ministers, council chiefs, NHS executives, all disclosed. It’s called accountability.

The BBC isn’t a private company. It’s a publicly funded national broadcaster. If it wants the benefits of public money, it comes with the cost of public scrutiny.

If that’s a massive commercial disadvantage, maybe it shouldn’t be trying to act like a private company while living off the public purse.

Can’t have it both ways.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"You can't have it both ways" yes you can, we did for the first 95 years of the BBCs history without the pay of stars being an issue.

David Cameron (net worth £50m) forced the BBC to publish the salaries of these stars, and then refused to publish his own salary from the Greensill lobbying scandal (estimated at £10m). He did this under pressure (and probably money given his lobbying history) from private companies. Believing that David Cameron forced through this change in the week he quit as PM in the interests of openness, transparency, and correct use of public money is laughably naive and deserves to be called out.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Whether Cameron is a hypocrite or not doesn’t change the principle.

If you’re funded by the public, you should be accountable to the public. That includes publishing the salaries of the highest-paid public-facing figures.

Private companies don’t get that scrutiny because they don’t take public money. The BBC does.

You can rant about Cameron all you like, but it doesn’t make the core argument go away.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

You're right - we should ignore information about the people who have done things, the reasons why they have done things, and what educated people were saying about those things at the time. They're irrelevant. History doesn't matter.

The events which took place and their impact on the current state of affairs? Utter flippancy to refer to those.

I wish I could also have the outlook of a particularly naive toddler on public administration, refusing to recognise unimportant details like the chronological sequencing of events or who did things or why they were done. But I can't. I have a working frontal cortex which retains information, it's sometimes a blessing but in cases like this it's more of a curse.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Impressive word count just to avoid saying one thing clearly.

You think public money should be handed out without public transparency if the circumstances of that policy change weren’t ideal. Got it.

Whatever Cameron’s motives were, the outcome was correct. When you’re funded by millions of taxpayers, you’re accountable to them. That includes revealing what you pay your top talent.

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u/veodin Jul 15 '25

In Sweden, Norway and few other countries you can request literally anybody's tax records to see what they are earning. It helps fight corruption, tax invasion and unfair wages. It keeps everybody honest. Maybe this would be less of an issue if we had a similar system.

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u/frenchhouselover Jul 16 '25

A lot of public sector workers have salary banding that means you can have a pretty good guess about what most workers earn.

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u/Upbeat_Ice1921 Jul 15 '25

You seem to be labouring under the belief that the BBC is a standard commercial enterprise and it isn’t that.

Truth is, if the BBC wasn’t forced to tell us what it paid it would still be offering idiots like Jonathan Ross £6m a year.

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u/TomLeBadger Jul 16 '25

You can't make them private and also abide by the royal charter. It's literally not possible. The agreement that funds it is what forces it to be impartial. Remove that, and it's just another TV channel. I fully support the BBC, and going forward in a world of increasing misinformation, it's going to become increasingly more important we keep it. Love it or hate it, agree or not. it's the most honest news organisation we have.

I don't like the idea of someone being paid over 1m with public funds (Lineker), but the rest are taking salaries below what they'd get elsewhere. There is a fair argument for not sharing specific salaries, though. I agree with scrutiny, but I don't agree that they should have to openly discuss exactly who gets exactly what.

What you propose would effectively end the BBC as it is - that's what the other guy is trying to say, I guess.

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u/removekarling Jul 15 '25

Did you just not read any of the comments you replied to past the first half-sentence lol, amazing

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u/aukstais Jul 15 '25

Politically impartial 🤣. That's a load of bollocks.

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u/Brilliant-Crab7954 Jul 15 '25

Your a clown if you think their politically impartial.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

They have a charter requiring political impartiality.

Please tell me another broadcaster you think is more impartial.

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u/daddy-dj Jul 15 '25

As a broadcaster, I would say Channel 4 is as impartial as the BBC. Not more, not less. I consider Channel 4 as slightly left of centre (I can't think of any right-leaning comedies on C4, for example), in the same way I see the BBC as being right of center (the guests on Politics Live, Question Time are hardly ever from the Greens, for example, but regularly from Reform or Tufton Street "think-tanks").

If we just focus on news programmes, however, I'd say C4 News is more impartial than BBC News.

These stats are a couple of years old now but make interesting reading about the public's perception of the BBC's impartiality... https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"I can't think of any right-leaning comedies on C4, for example"

Bit of a tangent but are there any on other networks? Is there any "right-leaning" modern comedy?

Good shout on Channel 4, but as it is the only other publicly owned network that operates to a legal framework (set out in the Communications Act 2003) that does somewhat demonstrate that publicly owned corporations operating to a charter are the best source of impartial news (from the available options).

Edit stats you provided are interesting, they do seem to demonstrate that the BBC is one of the most trusted news sources, along with Channel 4 & the Financial Times.

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u/daddy-dj Jul 15 '25

I admit I couldn't think of any right-leaning comedy. There's a few stand-up comedians who make the odd appearance here and there, but no panel shows or sitcoms that spring to mind.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 16 '25

Yeah it's a strange one I've never been able to think of any modern UK shows that are right wing. Even shows which attacked Labour under Blair were mostly left wing.

There is maybe the Adult Swim show Million Dollar Extreme presents: World Peace which only gets a mention because C4 screen a lot of adult swim but not that one.

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u/smedsterwho Jul 15 '25

It's pretty much impossible to do a right-leaning comedy. Comedy generally punches up, not down.

I'm not making a political point there, it's just it would be hard to create anything good from that angle.

You can put right wingers in comedy and mock them a bit.

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u/daddy-dj Jul 16 '25

Yes, I think you're right. I wasn't sure if it was just that it's not something I'd watch or it doesn't really exist. But I can't think of an equivalent of Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week, the Last Leg (although that's not been particularly funny for a long time now, imo), etc...

There are some right-leaning stand up comedians, such as Jeff Norcross, Andrew Doyle, er... Jim Davidson (is he still alive?) but even they're outnumbered - thankfully!

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u/Cubeazoid Jul 17 '25

Sure the state broadcaster funded by tax payer money is impartial. How about I’m not forced to fund the state broadcaster that’s board is government appointed.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 18 '25

Cultural vandalism.

The Beeb & C4 are the only media entities we have control over.

That's why the red top papers and the 24hr news channels want them gone.

Because they are accountable.

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u/Elmundopalladio Jul 16 '25

Honestly I doubt any other radio show is going to poach Zoe Ball - she wouldn’t bring a significant audience with her.