Horner's Corner

The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch

by on Mar.03, 2010, under media

Steve-Bell-03.02.10-005

The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch

Mark Thompson is jumping from the second storey because he fears a new government may throw him from the roof

So why has Mark Thompson done it? Because he feared that if he didn’t jump from the second storey window, an incoming Conservative government would push him off the roof. He is right to be anxious. The Tories have indeed signalled a hostility to the BBC that is rare, if not unprecedented, in an opposition. Why might that be? Two words: Rupert Murdoch.

People often speak of the unique influence of the media magnate, with his combination of economic and political muscle, but “influence” doesn’t quite capture it. Instead David Cameron has simply allowed News Corp to write the Conservative party’s media policy.

Start with the BBC. Murdoch, with son James, can’t stand it – regarding it, a senior figure in broadcasting tells me, as “like the Ebola virus: they can’t destroy it, so they try to contain it”. They dress up their opposition in pseudo-intellectual free market blather, but the reality is much earthier than that: the BBC is a rival, and therefore an obstacle to their commercial ambitions. The smaller and weaker the BBC becomes, the more money News Corp can make.

So the Murdochs constantly demand a cut in the licence fee. Last year Cameron nodded dutifully, and called for an immediate freeze in the licence fee. That would have marked an unprecedented break in the multi-year financial settlement that is so integral to the BBC’s independence – preventing it from constantly having to make nice to the politicians to keep the money coming in.

Second only to their loathing of the BBC is the Murdochs’ hatred of Ofcom, the regulator that stands between them and monopolistic domination of the entire UK media landscape.They particularly dislike Ofcom snooping into pay-TV, an area that makes billions for Sky. How odd, then, that a matter of days after the regulator published a proposal that would have forced Sky to charge less for its sport and movie channels, Cameron, in a speech on quangos, suddenly singled out Ofcom, suggesting it would be cut “by a huge amount”, possibly even replaced altogether.

That’s the pattern in one area after another

Read more at:

The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian.

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