Teignmouth councillor and columnist Alison Eden gets To The Point:

What is good TV? What does it do? Who should pay for it? These questions are certainly not new but right now they are urgent.

Much though I might often rage at the output from what some describe as the Boris Broadcasting Company, the news that PM Boris Johnson’s government is charging down the road of privatising the BBC raises chilling questions.

Nadine Dorries MP, the Conservative Party culture secretary, she who sought fame in the literal jungle of reality TV wolfing down raw offal, has a plan - freeze the licence fee and end the role of public, advert-free, broadcasting. What will this lead to?

The value of a national broadcaster with a charter that mandates objectivity lies in its function as a trusted source of what is happening in the country. News is and should be an enabler of action and changed minds.

For example, after seeing a news item that contained an item about starving children in Malawi, a friend’s young daughter asked her Mum if she could send her dinner to Africa in the post. She saw the report because ’the news was on’ and the family watching it had no control over the content other than switching off the TV. Compare that with a situation where adverts drive programming.

What pressure will be placed on editors of news and magazine programmes by companies who want to place their ads for luxury cars and holidays next to feel-good news items not dying children.

News should not pacify. It should not entertain. I don’t think I should be able to select only news I am interested in or that makes me comfortable. How will I ever change my mind or learn if I am never challenged or brought face to face with difficult truths?

A diet of wall-to-wall light entertainment, reality programmes and feel-good stories is also politically an effective recipe for suppression. It’s an excellent way to stop people questioning our currently shaky status quo. Without the objective output of a national broadcaster, there will be no nation-wide, advert-free, supply of information and commentary. You can’t object to something you know nothing about.

The BBC absolutely should be upsetting the government of the day regardless of who’s in power. It should continue asking difficult questions, interviewing political figures and allowing journalists to be investigators and not sycophants or mirrors to an MP’s vanity.

The fact that the BBC is failing, in my eyes, to be as rigorous and objective as it should be does not mean it should be abolished.

Nadine Dorries’ supporters say they abhor ’state-run’ TV as an argument to stop funding the BBC via the licence fee. This is a mendacious argument. The BBC is not state-run it is state-funded. That’s a world of difference.

State-funded broadcasting that is mandated to provide balanced, objective independent content at a national level is essential to our freedom. Without knowledge we are puppets.