It makes sense for the over-75s to pay the licence fee

Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4’s head of news, last week told the Edinburgh television festival: ‘Here is what we all need to decide: what do we do when a known liar becomes our prime minister?’ Yet she is surprised when Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn — both of whom she calls ‘cowards’ — do not come on her programmes. She regards it as their democratic duty to be interrogated by her journalists. If you watch her deliver her lecture, you can see she is positively proud of her character assassination of both men. It does not seem to cross her mind that she is breaking her public service obligation of fairness, and therefore has no moral hold on them. Broadly speaking, it is the duty of elected politicians to explain themselves to the public. Therefore they should deal with the media. It does not follow that they must appear on shows run and staffed by people who are trying to destroy them.