[Update] The News Corp scandal

[Ignitionnet]

Murdoch is a scumbag but the idea that stopping him from getting his mitts on Sky News preserves plurality in TV media when 70% of it is the BBC compared to 7% Sky is ridiculous.

Government has absolutely no business interfering in his attempts to take over BSkyB either. Regardless of the moral outrage if the deals follow the relevant regulations all is fine. It's all well and good preaching about the free market, it's not right to suddenly get interventionist when it's politically expedient so frankly Labour and the Lib Dems can stop hand wringing and shut up. Hilarious really a party that calls themselves 'Liberal' being so desperate to get interventionist. Planks.

Good to see the mainstream media getting suitable mileage out of all this, to the exclusion of everything else. It also gives the Labour party more time to avoid having to come up with something like coherent policies as they have another angle to do the only thing they seem to know how to do right now and attack the government, which is pretty rich actually.



Both sets of politicians are squarely in an unpleasant orifice of Murdoch.

Wish the Mother of all Parliaments would grow up a bit. It seems to be fighting over moral outrage, faux moral outrage, some twisting of facts and not a lot of genuine, constructive substance at the moment. No wonder the current government is such a pile of excrement when all they have competing with them is cynical, directionless opportunists.

Murdoch make Mandelson look like the 'white' lord in comparison. Truly a scary individual. At the same time politicians trying to cash in on this for popularism makes me want to vomit. If they broke the law they should go to prison. If it can be proven it goes all the way to the top then all the way to the top can also go to prison.

---------- Post added at 22:54 ---------- Previous post was at 22:50 ----------

Originally Posted by Flyboy

It appears Murdoch has now reneged on a commitment to make Sky News independent.

Phone hacking scandal: Murdoch pulls Sky News plan to force inquiry



This will now undoubtedly be referred to the competition commission, which I suspect was the plan all along. It is not impossible to imagine that he has a few "friends" on that commission.

Good - it was ridiculous and unnecessary anyway. It's a cynical little move on his part of course, however so long as the commission follow the rules he's in with a fairly good chance of getting it through, because it's not a threat to competition.

Ofcom's own figures during the initial investigation:



So who's the threat to plurality exactly?

[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by Flyboy

This will now undoubtedly be referred to the competition commission, which I suspect was the plan all along. It is not impossible to imagine that he has a few "friends" on that commission.

Already has been?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14112465

Originally Posted by Flyboy

Did anyone ever see "Goldeneye?"

Nope...

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

So who's the threat to plurality exactly?

It's forward looking, when the tenders for news provider come up again both ITV and Channel 4 are likely to abandon ITN for Sky News.

Sure then the BBC will still have the bulk of the viewership, but Sky News will be responsible for the content on near enough every other news broadcast.

[Ignitionnet]

It won't change that graph, that's referring to retail not wholesale provision.

As we both know the retail is important, with control over the retail one can completely ignore things like the Eurozone looking shaky and 'business as usual, honest guv' meetings happening at the highest levels and spend all their time on moral crusades against Murdoch.

This also still leaves Sky worse than 70 - 30 down on wholesale TV, and while NI do have a strong showing in the papers it's more than offset by the BBC's dominance of the online news space where they again more than double the next player, which is actually the Daily Fail.

Personally I'd love to see a Fox News UK. Would bring some comedy into the propaganda and at least you'd know that what you were watching was openly unabashed biased BS.

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Personally I'd love to see a Fox News UK. Would bring some comedy into the propaganda and at least you'd know that what you were watching was openly unabashed biased BS.

We have had an openly unabashed biased BS propaganda tabloid press for decades. Don't you think they have influenced public thinking in many areas?

Obviously tabloid readers are people who don't have as mighty a brain as you but at least they can read to some extent.

That can't necessarily be said about the viewers of Fox news UK.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Flyboy

I would love to be able to agree with that, but his stranglehold he has on the establishment and close links to people in the government, it is likely that he will succeed, maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but not in the too distant future.

Did anyone ever see "Goldeneye?"

"GoldenEye"? Surely you mean "Tomorrow Never Dies"...

[denphone]

And these are the latest headlines this morning in our daily rags.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...cal-files.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...l-gordon-brown

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-she-knew.html

[eto]

Murdoch's dirty tricks against Palestinians http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...550718371.html

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Murdoch is a scumbag but the idea that stopping him from getting his mitts on Sky News preserves plurality in TV media when 70% of it is the BBC compared to 7% Sky is ridiculous.
...
So who's the threat to plurality exactly?

Plurality refers to the news media as a whole doesn't it? Which means you need to factor in News International with The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and their respective websites. News Corp would be quite dominant if they control that portion of the media. Single providers are pretty dangerous, after all it wouldn't have been any of those papers or Sky breaking the news about the hacking scandal.

[Osem]

Andrew Neil was on good form last night, ably exposing Tessa Jowell's double standards and tendency to rewrite history with respect to what's been going on for years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...cs_11_07_2011/

She also didn't much like being pressed on why her government hadn't done more to follow up a report presented to them in 2006 about the illegal gathering of information. Her stuttering reply was that there was no good reason why they didn't act then, denying that their inaction may have been due to New Labour's very own close relationship with Murdoch. Well it wouldn't do would it?...

Things got more than a little uncomfortable when pressing her about Ed Milliband employing Tom Baldwin as his press secretary who it seems is also facing some awkward questions of his own.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...d-2311635.html

Apparently, after demanding Rebekah Brooks' head, Milliband was warned by a senior News Intl. journalist that life would soon get rather more uncomfortable for him.....

[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by Matt D

"GoldenEye"? Surely you mean "Tomorrow Never Dies"...

Oops.............

Originally Posted by Flyboy

I am sure you are not accusing Ed Milliband of bullying James Hunt, are you. Because you really need to see Cameron when he has a full head of steam.



But Cameron's involvement cannot be circumvented by simply saying he is not the issue. Although he is not yet at the centre of all of this, he must take at least some resonsibilty for his complicity.

---------- Post added at 22:11 ---------- Previous post was at 22:10 ----------



I don't think she have taken that many holidays, could she?

I am saying that he needs to avoid making it a party issue because Labour are as guilty of cuddling up to Murdoch as the Tories have.No one party can claim total innocence and if you can't see that then frankly I am wasting my time trying to explain it to you.

Originally Posted by Maggy J

I am saying that he needs to avoid making it a party issue because Labour are as guilty of cuddling up to Murdoch as the Tories have.No one party can claim total innocence and if you can't see that then frankly I am wasting my time trying to explain it to you.

I think it's a bad move to place the blame for hacking on the government because obviously it happened across governments. However I don't think that is what Labour have done.

They have questioned the judgement of the PM in employing Andy Coulson and have been pushing for a inquiry - both of these are valid approaches IMO - albeit slightly hypocritical as they didn't have an inquiry when these allegations first came out.

Originally Posted by Damien

I think it's a bad move to place the blame for hacking on the government because obviously it happened across governments. However I don't think that is what Labour have done.

They have questioned the judgement of the PM in employing Andy Coulson and have been pushing for a inquiry - both of these are valid approaches IMO - albeit slightly hypocritical as they didn't have an inquiry when these allegations first came out.

So they need to tread a careful path to ensure that inquiries take place,that all is done within the law to ensure that BSkyb is not just handed over to Murdoch and that anyone guilty of illegallity pays the price but without trying to score political points.It could backfire on them particularly with the public.

Basically they need to be acting in the interests of the country not the party.