TV Licensing Catches Young People: Desperate Churnalism

Anyone with a keen interest in TV Licensing may have noticed a recent deluge of local newspaper articles about the number of young people caught evading the TV licence fee in their particular local area.

There are examples here, here and here.

TV Licensing's imaginative PR harlots (read about their handiwork here) have provided these statistics to the publications concerned. There is no way of verifying them and in all likelihood, in common with a lot of TV Licensing claims, they probably aren't very accurate.

TV Licensing knows fine well that the publications concerned will never question its word, because as the BBC's revenue generation arm anything it says must be treated as sacrosanct. Of course, back in the real world, lies tumble naturally from TV Licensing's forked tongue.

Anyhow, the reason we're writing this article is to bring to readers' minds a very important distinction: even if TV Licensing's claims of X hundred young people being caught evading the TV licence fee are true, doubtful as that may be, that does not equate to X hundred number of young people being convicted of TV licence evasion.

TV Licensing has a very questionable method of compiling evasion statistics. Instead of counting the number of people actually convicted of TV licence evasion, it actually counts the number of people that give a prosecution interview under caution (otherwise known as a "Code 8" in TV Licensing jargon). A significant proportion of Code 8 cases never make it as far as court and actually less than half of them result in a conviction.

Of course TV Licensing would never paint that complete picture, because doing so would seriously undermine its key message - get a TV licence or else. It plays into TV Licensing's hands for people to misunderstand the difference between being "caught" and being "convicted", so it never volunteers clarification or explanation its statistics.

If you've found this article useful please support us by using our link the next time you shop at Amazon. You can also support us by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter or downloading our free ebook.