Curb the corporation - Telegraph Politicians are adept at telling their audiences what they want to hear and then failing to follow through on what they have said. We trust this is not true of Theresa May. Addressing the annual conference of the Society of Editors yesterday, the Home Secretary made several important points about the impact that the BBC's presence on the internet is having on the newspaper industry. She criticised the corporation's ability to subsidise its online coverage through the licence fee, thereby placing it in direct, and unfair, competition with commercial publishers. Moreover, she correctly identified the dangers that this posed not just to the future of newspapers, both locally and nationally, but to democracy itself. We could not agree more. The plurality of British national newspapers, representing every opinion across the spectrum, is one of this country's great strengths. Locally, the press has held councils and other institutions to account, while providing readers with informed and good quality journalism. But the BBC's reach and power have changed everything, because it has been able to draw upon a guaranteed pot of money in order to establish an all-encompassing news website that has taken away their readers at a time of financial hardship for newspapers. This is not a hard-luck story, but a simple statement of fact. As Mrs May said, this process "is destroying local newspapers and could eventually happen to national newspapers as well." Now that she has identified the problem, the Home Secretary should recognise that the solution is in her and her colleagues" hands. We question whether the BBC should be funded by a licence fee at all. But for this arrangement to continue, it should be a condition that the revenues are not used to crush the life out of local newspapers and other publications.