Skip to main content

Murdoch: into the Endgame

Two weeks ago Rupert Murdoch-controlled News International has a minority holding in BSkyB and full ownership of four national Daily and Sunday newspapers. True, He had explored turning his Dailies into seven day operations, but that looked to be a little while away. Also true, he was bidding for 100% control of BSkyB.

Now he has a minority holding in BSkyB and full ownership of three Daily and Sunday newspapers. A seven day Sun looks to be only a few weeks away and although the current bid for BSkyB has been shelved, another bid could be tabled within a few months, if need be.

It rather looks as though Murdoch has lost a battle, but not yet lost the war.

Yet there is still the ongoing political shitstorm to get through. Though the pressure from the BSkyB bid may take some of the heat away, there is still the ongoing police investigation and the political and judicial inquiry and the real possibility of a backlash in the US.

From the point of view of the UK, Murdoch has had a small defeat: his papers can never again behave with such impunity, and British politicians will now be extremely wary in their dealings with the press. We will see if that will be enough to satisfy the wrath of political and public opinion.

I suspect it will, which will mean that the Murdoch serpent has been only partially de-fanged.

For me, however, it is not enough: it merely restates that breaking the law is a bad idea, it does not take sufficient sanction against the criminals responsible in the first place. The judicial inquiry and the police investigation must be backed to the hilt until full completion.

Never again should the press or the police, still less politicians, believe themselves to be above the law.
Labels:

Comments

Richard T said…
The re-erection of a Murdoch Sunday paper may lead News International into more trouble. As the precipitate closure of the News of the World made the staff redundant without notice and outwith the statuory 90 day consultation period, the organisation is going to walk into serious unfair dismissal problems if the Sunday Sun appears at any time within the 90 days and probably within whatever statutory notice was in the employees' contracts. The redundancy terms are going to have to be very generous to avoid trouble and, bearing in mind the manner of the dismissals, I can't see much hope for forbearance from the former employees of the News of the World. We shall see.
8:36 am
Tim Worstall said…
Not quite. News I owns the newspapers. News Corp owns News I plus the BSkyB stake.
9:23 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...
1 comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...
Post a Comment
Read more