Rupert Murdoch in London trying not to be papped, yet still looking rather smug...
What an amazing week we have just witnessed, seven days ago we were expecting the BSkyB deal to be given the green light by Jeremy Hunt, the Culture, Media, Sport and Olympics minister. Now we have just seen to collapse of the BSkyB deal all together, which to me is really quite remarkable.
So, the casualties so far of the Phone-Hacking saga has been both News of the World (and the two-hundred hacks working there, not to mention the free-lancers) and now Murdoch’s £8 Billion BSkyB take over. Notably though, however, not Mrs Brooks (quite good friends with Tony Blair and Cameron, cheif-executive of News International), James Murdoch (who is in charge of News Corporations Asian and European operations, he is also Chairman on the BSkyB board) and obviously the overlord and operator of the death star his self, Rupert Murdoch. Never has there been a set back so big, the end of a dream for the 80-year-old media-mogul than alleged phone-hacking.
However if you think this is over, its really not. I believe that this was just a way to avoid questions over the ‘fit and proper’ status OfCom have to declare you as, as a broadcaster. Currently 39% of BSkyB give him a controlling stake within Sky (and if you believe that Sky News would become more left or right wing, it would be very hard due to OfCom and the regulations they have in place ensuring that broadcast news is ‘impartial’ — the case for it not been implemented in newsprint is because of broadcasting having limited spectrum, whereas anyone can open a newspaper in theory). But, if they are found as not a ‘fit and proper’ organization to own the other 69% of BSkyB they would then have to sell the other 39% of BSkyB they own, by law. So this is another Murdoch ruse to sidetrack us both away from the commons debate (and ultimate vote, many news soundbites would be provided here) and then to, more importantly for the Murdoch’s (chiefly James), die down calls for a ‘fit and proper’ test on the Murdochs — however, this hasn’t worked as well as they had anticipated, which as mentioned could result in the complete loss of BSkyB or the dilution of their stock holding now OfCom are investigating with the probable result of them being fit and proper as no criminal charges have been filed against them as of yet.
This is for other reasons too, News International is falling apart. We have already seen them starting to try and fight back with The Suns front page declaring that Brown is wrong about them ‘hacking’ his phone messages, but to me this mainly highlights how Brown can’t even score an open goal with the goal posts so far apart it could be best described as a wonder of the universe (if he bothered to read the Press Complaints Commission’s [PCC] code of conduct, and invoked 6(v) he would have killed the story). Then not helped by Andrew Neil reporting that brown said to Murdoch on September 29th 2009 (the day that the Sun switched its support from Labour to the Conservatives on the day of Browns last speech to his party, which I personally thought was quite a compelling speech), “I will destroy you”. Brown even believes that he would still be in power today if it wasn’t for News International’s support for the Conservatives, so he too (like all in politics) is living in a dream world where they think Murdoch’s press is all powerful. They aren’t. He likes to pick winners so he can sell papers, its as simple as that. The only reason he backed Blair/New Labour in ’97 is because it was really quite obvious they were going to win. In fact you would have to be a delusional idiot on the moon to think otherwise… and the fact he likes to pick winners is also why he has never, ever really spoken to the Liberal Democrats.
13th July 2011, The Sun
With the signs of News Internationals fight back, this indicates to me that they are going to attempt to keep hold of the Newspapers they have left (The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times) for a considerable time, or sell them in the next year. A contradiction I agree, but they wont hold onto them for the medium term because then the enquiry will report whilst they are still in ownership and it would appear worse if they were to sell them around this time than to sell them now (people will forget) or to hold onto them and declare that “management has changed” etc, though Brooks’ would have to go, and possibly even James. This seems very unlikely to happen, they will probably get shifted around in the company though.
In my opinion the fight back shouldn’t continue with front pages declaring X was wrong; they may not even have to bother with a public fight back at all. Several internet reports are now indicating that this fiasco is going to move on from News International onto other papers on Fleet Street such as the Mirror and Piers Morgan in particular. In fact it doesn’t help that in Piers’ book, ‘The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade’ he writes;
Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.
In addition to this idiocy by Piers Morgan, Richard Desmond’s papers will be looked at carefully (in fact his Sunday paper related to the Star has had its offices searched according to reports). So when the Prime Minister said “We are all in this together” in relation with MPs and the Press, Fleet Street can also say “We are all in this together”. In fact they’re all in the shit together and its not going to get much better.
One thing is obvious though, Fleet Street will change. The editors are all angry at News International. They have shut down the biggest newspaper in the world, and they have drawn attention to all of this. If I was them I would be asking Murdoch, “What have you done? Your hacks have messed everything up. You should be ashamed of yourself”.
Note, every time someone says “fit and proper” in random discourse about the subject profusely… they almost certainly have an agenda. Watch out for that.
[We had a fantastic debate about this on the last podcast, which you can find here]