Plurality Of The Media

Vince Cable, that well known beacon of intellectual capability and economic reason, has shoved his oar into the debate in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, telling the BBC that ‘having media moguls dominating the British media is deeply unhelpful’.

Presumably, in the case of News Corporation, we can read Vince’s ‘deeply unhelpful’ as ‘not fully part of my favoured liberal-left media consensus’. How dare individuals own large numbers of newspapers and influence the British political scene. Disgraceful. Anyway, our dear Business Secretary went on to add:

We have learned from the past that having media moguls dominating the British media is deeply unhelpful, not simply in terms of plurality but because of the wider impact on the political world.

What I want to see is a very clear set of unambiguous rules… about market shares, that we don’t have dominant players and a presumption against cross-ownership between press and television.

It isn’t simply an issue of Rupert Murdoch, there are other big media companies who could have the same influence in future and we’ve got to stop that happening.

This, you may remember, is the same man who ‘declared war’ on Rupert Murdoch and News International before the phone hacking scandal re-broke (remember it was old news until the Guardian and BBC dug it out again for their own ends), and was consequently stripped of his status over media policy on the BSkyB bid. This is not about phone hacking and never was – it is about ensuring the stranglehold grip of the liberal-left over the media establishment.

Of course, a fantastic way of ensuring greater plurality of media in Britain, which Saint Vince says he so desires, is the abolition or significant downsizing of our beloved national broadcaster. The BBC is a huge, sprawling organisation, owned by the state and funded by the television licence fee. What better way of opening up the media playing field than taking apart the BBC monopoly? But will Vince be seeking to break up their dominance over the broadcast and online media? Not likely.

A Rude Awakening

I’ve just arrived back from the blazingly hot island of Malta where I’ve spent this past week trying to forget about the realities of the present and instead learn a little more about the not so recent past.

Even so, I’ve managed to keep a few tabs on the news (if you could really call it that) in the evenings via Sky News in my hotel room (it was a choice between that, CNN and a selection of rather dubious foreign comedy channels).

Amusingly, I also caught a late night news round-up on the BBC World Service with Richard North as a panellist. Amazing really; you go abroad to get away from the work, the blogs, Richard North et all, and yet the man still manages to find a way through!

No doubt parts of our beloved national media are being overcome with similar feelings. As much as the press try to ignore the current economic realities, they just keep cropping back up to divert their attention from the vital task of endlessly discussing themselves.

Just before my return, it seemed that, all of a sudden, the broadcast and newspaper media had finally woken up to the fact that, yes, the hacking affair was not perhaps the most important item of news on the current, reality-based agenda. The Euro zone economies are collapsing under a mountain of self-inflicted debt, and there is a very real possibility that this could destroy the single currency.

This collapse has been on the cards for some time now, and yet if you listen to large sections of the media then it would appear that they have only recently uncovered this crisis, such is the wide-eyed wonderment with which it is breathlessly reported.

It strikes me that the treatment of the financial crisis by the media is in many ways similar to the famine in Somalia. It wasn’t until this week when the United Nations publically declared that there was a famine in Somalia that the media suddenly took interest. Before the announcement, it was if the famine had not existed, such was the miniscule level of reporting. Similarly, now that the European Union, in the form of our dear leader, José Manuel Barroso, has spoken of the severity of the European economic situation then suddenly, guess what, it’s a crisis! Who would have thought it..?

It seems, in the collective eyes of the media establishment, that for something to exist or become fact then it must be acknowledged by the U.N. or receive other supposedly ‘expert’ approval. And it’s not just any old ‘expert’ that will do either, but ones carefully selected from ‘accepted’ groups and organisations who have a monopoly on officially and legitimately being allowed to care about suffering, starvation or our old favourite, climate change. If anyone outside of the bubble expresses an opinion, however valid or important, then nothing is done. It is ignored, until suddenly, an oik at the BBC or Guardian decides that, you know what, the European economies might actually be on the verge of hitting the fan because José told us so. Only then, apparently, is it worthy of being ‘news’…

News That Makes The News

I did not shed a tear when I learnt of the demise of The News of the World, which is to close next week with a final edition after 168 years of publishing.

It was never my newspaper of choice, being rather light on actual news and rather heavy on the kind of moronic celebrity gossip designed to keep the plebs occupied rather than focused on anything meaningful or important.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that The News of the World will disappear all together, with News International PLC almost certainly planning to re-launch the paper under a different brand. Furthermore, the same journalists working at The News of the World will simply transfer across to the new paper or indeed another paper – so nothing much or substantial will have changed in that regard beyond the image.

However, the fate of The News of the World is not actually the really important matter, but instead the manner of its downfall and what was subsequently brought to light (and I am not referring to the alleged phone hacking – which is rather unimportant and a matter for the police and the courts).

The so-called phone hacking scandal is firstly an absolutely classic example of Westminster-village journalism, and illustrates just how the news corporations make the news and set the public agenda to the exclusion of much more important stories and events outside of the political classes’ bubble. As Richard North observed, did our MPs ever demand an emergency debate over the banking crisis, or more recently the Euro zone and debt crisis in Greece, as they have over phone hacking? The answer is, of course, er, no…

Click here to continue reading the article…

Inflation Causes Inflation

In a brief discussion today on the BBC News 24, the presenter attributed a rise in inflation to an increase in the prices of alcohol, transport and energy costs.

That is like saying, the inflation has been caused by the inflation – or indeed, that old classic, the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. It tells us absolutely nothing about why the prices of alcohol, transport or energy actually rose!

I’m so glad that licence fee payers fork out £3.5bn a year to fund such quality reporting by our beloved national broadcaster.