United Kingdom

It makes more sense when you view it through the lens of Rupert Murdoch absolutely despising the very notion of publicly funded state media, because media is how he wields power and public broadcasters can't (in theory) be bought.

Through that perspective you begin to see that the majority of anti-BBC stories that turn up in the privately owned news outlets are almost always bollocks wrapped around a tiny kernel of truth. And there's an awful lot of those stories rustling up dissent against the BBC. How many Sun readers think the licence fee is nothing more than an unjust tax, that they never watch or listen to the BBC, so shouldn't have to pay it? They've sown that disgruntlement for decades, which has inevitably led to successive governments freezing the fee, or minimising how much it can be increased, which has the knock on effect of making the BBC's output less high quality than the country deserves.

That's been Murdoch's modus operandi for as long as he's had a presence in the UK. The existence of (supposedly) impartial BBC News is a high benchmark that cripples his ability to peddle whatever the fuck it is Fox does over in the US.

The only real surprising thing in all this debacle is just how far The Sun over-reached. They're a nest of vipers, but they're not normally this stupid. Which suggests they thought they had a far stronger story than it turned out. Trouble is, literally all that will happen is that they'll stick their fingers in their ears for a week, wait for everyone to forget about it, then they'll return to business as usual.