As a result of Jeremy Hunt's announcement Rupert Murdoch is virtually certain to end up owning a monster UK media company
So Rupert Murdoch got what he wanted. If there is a less surprising sentence in the English language it would be good to know of it. As a result of Jeremy Hunt's announcement yesterday the American media tycoon is virtually certain to end up owning a monster British media company spanning broadcasting, newspapers and film and sports rights ? together with the distribution channels through which the content is piped. His television company ? double the size of the BBC ? will be free to exploit numerous synergies with his newspapers, which are easily the most dominant in the market. If the government doesn't understand why this makes a great many people nervous it is either being disingenuous or dishonest.
The timing could hardly be worse. Rupert Murdoch's companies in Britain are currently subject to unprecedented scrutiny and investigation. There is a 45-strong team of detectives looking into how one of his newspapers illegally commissioned a snooper to hack into the phones of numerous leading politicians, royals and actors. Two parliamentary committees are looking into related questions of MPs' privilege and the supine behaviour of the police when confronted with this kind of media muscle. There are multiple civil actions wending their way through the courts by the victims of this illicit surveillance. And the press regulator, the PCC, has launched its own inquiry as to whether ? or, more accurately, how ? it was misled and into the nature of the expensive cover-up orchestrated by News International, with the presumed acquiescence of the "independent" grandees on the News Corp board.
So this was hardly the best moment to be offering Mr Murdoch even more power. Given the perfectly reasonable suspicions that hang over any dealings involving Mr Murdoch, politicians and regulation it would have been wiser for Mr Hunt to have passed the matter straight to the Competition Commission, as the media regulator Ofcom advised. Mr Hunt chose a different course ? trying to see if he could extract concessions out of Mr Murdoch which would relieve him of the need to involve any more regulators. Mr Murdoch duly obliged, with a souped-up version of his favourite solution when thus challenged ? an "independent" oversight board. By hiving off Sky News into a curious spinoff company with a 10-year guarantee of Murdoch cashflow, the problem was solved to the satisfaction of all concerned.
What the Murdoch lawyers and lobbyists have done is cleverly weave their way through the gaps between European regulation, competition law and the muddled and inadequate framework for judging issues of media plurality. The coalition government (and where were the Lib Dem voices yesterday?) cannot seriously believe that yesterday's decision will advance the cause of media plurality in this country. No weight has been given to the future potential for price bundling, rights carve-ups and cross-platform advertising deals which smaller media groups simply won't be able to compete with. News Corp operates on a global scale. Most of its competitors work on a much more limited scale, often within national boundaries, with different statutory frameworks. News Corp can be arguing about plurality of news in one arena, about territorial sports rights in another and about secondary movies rights in yet another.
Mr Hunt hinted that a future communications bill might find ways of addressing the sort of media dominance which grows organically rather than through acquisition. In future, if Ofcom's proposal is accepted, any warping of the media landscape with one company growing too big ? not least through competitors dropping out ? could be subject to a public interest test which would put it in danger of being broken up. Such a measure is urgently needed. Whether this government has the genuine political will to pass it must be doubted. It is, after all, not what Mr Murdoch would want.
International criminal court Republicans Rape Foreign currency
No comments:
Post a Comment