You could translate most of this Daily Telegraph piece into Norwegian, exchange "BBC" with "NRK", and publish it in one of our own newspapers, and the criticism would be just as valid (and much more sorely needed):

The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.

This describes a mindset most other Norwegian journalists belong to as well, but nobody's forced to pay for their stuff. (Not as much and as blatantly, anyway.) I'm of the opinion that NRK should be privatized. Aside from other arguments, such as the very questionable practice of license fees, it's really the only way to avoid the inevitable dilemmas that follow when you have news media that are run by the government. The challenge is how to make a state broadcaster accountable to the people it is meant to serve, without it turning into a government spokespiece. You can't have both independence and accountability, and you don't want the one without the other. This isn't much of a topic in Norway, but it should be, and is in Denmark, where politicians have openly criticized DR's anti-Israelism and left-wing bias, and are then accused of censorship.

NRK is fairly popular in Norway at the moment - there seems to be a broad consensus that state broadcasting is a good thing, and that NRK is reliable and balanced, but this says more about Norwegian politics than it says about NRK. It won't last. Sooner or later NRK will offend a significant number of people on a controversial issue, (not just a small minority as it has on Iraq and Israel), and we too will have to face that dilemma. There's no way to do that and keep NRK as it is. The only solution that can be acceptable to everyone is to make NRK fully accountable to the viewers, and the viewers alone - a practice also known as "commercial broadcasting". We'll arrive at that conclusion eventually - I just fear it'll take a while.

It's been ages since I watched any Norwegian TV (I don't have one), but what you say has been true for a long time.

And in Norway there is no debate. I don't think even Carl I Hagen bothers to call NRK the "ARK" (aka Labour's Broadcasting Corporation) anymore.

There is one thing in favour of NRK and BBC though. It's damn annoying with all those commercials, especially on e.g. TV3 which are allowed to interrupt programmes (not Norway-based), making a movie last for hours. But then there is pay per view or pay channels, which have the same advantages.

I am ever so grateful the US mostly got out of public broadcasting. Although state funding continues at some level for NPR affiliate stations and some PBS stations, it's a pretty small fraction of the budget, and of what's available on the air.

Hello,

The US fuckin' media are not balanced, look at the jewish kid Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, a good jewish boy as everyone...

A balanced pictured, no hell....

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