Warning! Warning! Isn’t it interesting that Blair and Howard are trying to give Murdoch more power at the same time as they’re trying to destroy their public broadcasters, and that the Murdoch press in both countries is gleefully beating up on the same targets?
The BBC and the ABC are bodies largely independent of government by legislation, with legislated responsibilities, standards and review mechanisms. They are directly accountable to the people. Not to big business, not to big government, you understand, to the PEOPLE. They are bodies charged with acting in the public interest, not for private profit, to strive to make big business and big government accountable to the people. Their democratic role is to keep the powerful honest through fear that if they aren’t they’ll be caught out. Private media, by contrast, is virtually unaccountable to anyone except its owners.
Webdiarist James Woodcock found a sensational Guardian piece on what’s really going on here as we witness the rise of Anglofacism (thanks to Webdiarist Philip Gomes for the description).
Conrad Black’s right wing Telegraph newspaper in Britain is also onto the story of how Murdoch papers are beating Blair’s drum in his anti-BBC crusade. A taste of Murdoch papers step up war of words with BBC:
A concerted campaign by News International newspapers to castigate the BBC in its row with No 10 sparked accusations yesterday that Rupert Murdoch’s titles were being used to damage his biggest broadcasting rival.
Murdoch-owned newspapers such as The Times, Sun and News of the World have been significantly more zealous than other newspapers in backing No 10 over the BBC.
A source on The Times said yesterday there was “unease” among its journalists about the paper’s recent coverage of the dispute.
I again make the point: There are a large number of newspapers with different viewpoints and owners in the UK. There’s only Fairfax in capital city Australia to balance Murdoch’s dominance. Without an independent Fairfax, nothing like the Telegraph or Guardian pieces would ever be written in the mainstream press. As I keep repeating, the only real accountability is that different newspapers groups keep each other honest. With a partnership of Murdoch and Packer as owners, democracy is all over. Dismantling the ABC’s role as independent, dynamic, courageous scrutineers of government would be too easy. (See Closing the door on your right to know, written just before the Senate narrowly rejected the Howard cross media laws which he’ll send back to the Senate soon.)
By the way, the US Congress is set to say no to Bush’s attempt to give Murdoch more power over there (remember Murdoch is much more dominant here now than he would be in the United States AFTER the Bush changes became law). I’ve published today’s Australian Financial Review report on the US backlash to Murdoch power after the Guardian piece.
This BBC row is not about sources – it is about power
Downing Street and Rupert Murdoch want revenge on the corporation
by Jackie Ashley
Thursday July 24, 2003, The Guardian
What a difference a day makes. The daily skirmishes between the government and BBC have seen both sides at various points claiming victory. On Sunday, when the BBC confirmed Dr David Kelly had been “the source” for its claims about the mishandling of intelligence information, the government was bullish. Now, following reports that the Newsnight’s Susan Watts has a tape recording of her conversation with Dr Kelly, ministers are sounding less confident.
Yet the question now being asked is this: even if the BBC wins the battle (in other words is vindicated by the Hutton report), will it lose the war? Has the BBC, in defending Andrew Gilligan so robustly, brought about its own downfall?
For the word that recurs is “revenge”. Downing Street insiders, ministers and backbench MPs are saying privately that No 10 intends to wreak vengeance on the BBC, whatever Lord Hutton decides. Forget palm pilots or tape-recordings; the real agenda now is to humble and curb Britain’s public service broadcaster. This is not a row about journalistic standards. It is a fight about power.
No 10’s original excuse for its attack on the BBC was the Gilligan story. At first it looked as though Alastair Campbell had a genuine spasm of anger at a particular act of reporting; that this then bubbled through his irritation at the corporation’s handling of the war; and after that – well, things got out of hand. He lost it on Channel 4 News. To start with, the government seemed to have blundered into a fight and couldn’t find a way back. Now I am not so sure. I think it wanted this row all along. (Margo: As did Alston – he’s still running hard without a leg to stand on, and now Howard’s backed him all the way.)
There were so many moments in the story of the reporting of the government’s selling of the Iraq war when No 10 could have calmed things down. On every occasion, instead, they ratcheted it up again. Even now, in the gloomy pause after Dr Kelly’s death, while Blair is saying little in public, New Labour operators are charging around briefing in private, upping the odds. They want to get the governors. They want to get Greg Dyke. They want a new system of regulation. The licence fee is far too generous. Get the message, BBC? As Chris Smith pointed out in the Financial Times yesterday, any attempt to link recent events to the BBC’s future is little short of blackmail. (Margo: Just like Alston’s recent threat to defund the ABC after his ludicrous allegations of ABC bias on the Iraq war.)
The BBC prime crime has not been sloppy reporting or an anti-war agenda. Its crime is to have pointed the finger at gaping holes in the government’s case for going to war to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. If Gilligan had reported a single source to the effect that WMD were a threat, and that Campbell et al should have been more bellicose, would this row have happened? Don’t be absurd. It is not the detail of language the government objects to; it is the whole story.
The BBC has done what good journalism ought to do: probing and questioning insistently – things that the government would rather not discuss. During the war it reported and commented about what was happening in the sand and cities of Iraq. It did not do what some US broadcasters – notably Fox – did, and act as a patriotic national cheerleader.
Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is what Blair must have fantasised about having on his side. The network was raucously pro-administration, delivering to George Bush the rightwing commentaries and inspiring pictures he needed to help him conduct the war. How convenient it would be for any centreright, interventionist British leader to have his own, Union Jack-branded Fox.
If you doubt the influence of the Murdoch agenda on all this, look at any newsstand. The Murdoch papers have acted as the most amazingly disciplined attack force on behalf of the government, savaging the BBC in identical terms, from the Sun, to the Times, to the News of the World, using columnists, editorials and front-page splashes to pursue the cause. The attack on the BBC, orchestrated by No 10, has animated News International like nothing since its move to Wapping.
The stakes are almost as high. This time, with the communications bill soon to become law – even as amended – Murdoch has a chance of getting into terrestrial British TV. If he was able to curb the BBC in its funding and its journalism, shoving it into a narrow little box, from which timid establishment- style reporting and dreary documentaries were all that trickled out, he would be in business. He hates the BBC not because of the licence fee or its alleged liberal bias, but because it is popular and trusted. Everything his papers are now doing is designed to attack that popularity and trust. (Margo: Just like the Murdoch papers are doing to the ABC in Australia.)
Those papers have been intertwined with New Labour ever since it became clear that Blair would be in Downing Street. Blair wooed them, and from the first Murdoch, sensing a winner, responded.
Sun and Times journalists were courted and favoured with leaks, which they could promote as scoops; Murdoch editors were treated as visiting royalty when they were entertained at No 10 and Chequers. It is shameless, unabashed, and was driven both by Blair and by that high-minded socialist and critic of journalistic standards, Alastair Campbell.
Why do they do it? Because the deal is frank, and even on its own terms, honest. Murdoch wants media power and Blair wants reliable media support. So long as nobody takes journalistic principle or the public interest too seriously, then there is a deal to be done. (Margo: This is precisely the same arrangement Howard would have forged with Murdoch when they met just before S11.) One day, if Murdoch gets his way, he will be in a position of terrifying influence over any future government.
So this is a dangerous time for the BBC. In some ways it has been here before. In the wake of the Falklands war, when Alasdair Milne was director general, Margaret Thatcher berated him about BBC funding and journalism in terms almost identical to those we hear from Labour now. John Birt had his rows too.
But this is worse. Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke have refused to play their allotted role as New Labour toadies. This is brave since they must know that they, and the BBC, have nowhere else to go. The Tories would privatise them like a shot. Now that the Conservative manifesto is likely to suggest slashing the licence fee, it is not hard to see a vengeful New Labour starting a Dutch auction, cutting and cutting. Then it will be curtains for the governors and the hunt will be on for a more reliable director general.
The excuse will be, no doubt, all those rubbishy game shows, pop quiz programmes and yoof channels. The assault will be muffled by high-minded essays by Peter Mandelson and Gerald Kaufman on the subject of journalistic standards – they both have PhDs in that – and numerous journalists who are miffed that they haven’t been given enough airtime will go along for the ride. But no one should be in any doubt that New Labour is now deliberately menacing the independence of one of the bastions of British pluralism. (Margo: Just like Howard’s media and think tank cheer squad is doing in Australia right now.) This is a moment when the BBC needs its friends. (Margo: Is Australian Labor game to go into bat for the ABC, and maybe even guarantee its independence and funding? They’d even have an unlikely ally in Howard’s good friend Don McDonald.)
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Blow to Murdoch as Congress opposes TV change
by Luke Collins
24/07/2003, The Australian Financial Review
The US Congress appears likely to overturn at least some planned changes to US media ownership laws, particularly one that would help Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation by allowing the country’s biggest television networks to expand.
In a big reversal, top Republicans now concede they are unlikely to be able to stop the overturning of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to lift the national television audience cap from 35 per cent to 45 per cent. The Republican-controlled FCC approved that change 3 to 2 on party lines.
If the viewer limit is kept at 35 per cent, it would primarily affect News Corp and Viacom, which already breach the existing viewing limit and are banking on it being increased. They each hold waivers allowing their audience reach to be about 40 per cent pending a final decision.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to retain FCC changes that would ease cross-media restrictions. However, the issue of reversing the proposed change to the audience cap was not even challenged as Republican leaders knew they lacked the necessary support.
That raises the spectre of President George Bush using his legislative veto for the first time. The White House on Tuesday warned it was in favour of the FCC changes and some Republicans hope that threat will alone be enough to kill efforts to overturn the audience cap increase.
However, Mr Bush’s veto can be overridden by two-thirds of all voting members of the House and Senate and the broad bipartisan opposition to the FCC move indicates the veto could itself fail.
“If the White House is threatening a veto on this, they offer that at their own peril,” said Andy Davis, a spokesman for the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, Ernest Hollings. “This is an issue that has enormously broad bipartisan support. People are very passionate about this issue.”
Republicans have been surprised by the level of opposition, particularly from fellow Republicans. It has also surprised media companies, which last week sent a major delegation to Washington to lobby politicians about deregulation.
That rising opposition prompted the Bush administration to last week raise the veto threat. On Tuesday it sent politicians a written statement reiterating that possibility.
“The administration believes that the new FCC media ownership rules more accurately reflect the changing media landscape and the current state of network station ownership, while still guarding against undue concentration in the marketplace,” the statement said.
The White House warned a veto could occur if “this provision or a provision like it with respect to any one of the other FCC rules is contained in the final legislation presented to the President”, referring to the provision to set the television audience cap at 35 per cent.