Horse 1120 - Murdoch and the BBC

I'm afraid that it's just like old times again. Not content with destroying British industry to the point where it won't function again properly, the last time they were is office, the ****ing Tories have already started on their long term goals of hurting the BBC and ultimately selling it.

When David Cameron became Prime Minister as a result of forming a coalition with the Lib Dems, it may as well have been the magistrate signing a death warrant for the Beeb. Quite frankly it is disgusting that the very first person to go to Number 10 to meet with David Cameron after he became PM was none other Rupert Murdoch. There's nothing like a bit of nepotism is there?
It was Murdoch's newspapers who openly backed the Conservatives; even the chief political editor of News International in London Newton Dunn had this to say:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/04/murdoch-biographer-sun-editor

"It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street," proclaimed Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of the Sun, to a group of journalists from rival papers, recently.

The question is, how do you bring down an organisation like the BBC. As an established media outlet, it is heralded the world over for its reportage in often dangerous places. Within the UK it runs four national television stations, nine national radio stations, and lots of regional media outlets. As far as production of media content goes, it is second to none. So then, how do you hurt the BBC? By striking it directly in the hip pocket.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/19/bbc-licence-fee-frozen

The BBC licence fee is to be frozen at the current level of £145.50 for the next six years, a 16% cut in real terms, after the corporation today concluded a bruising round of funding negotiations with the coalition government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/18/bbc-coalition-licence-fee-raid

BBC bosses fear that the coalition government is gearing up for a £500m-plus raid on the licence fee, by forcing the broadcaster to meet the full cost of free television licences for the over 75s.

The benefit – which was introduced by Gordon Brown when he was chancellor – costs £556m, and is currently paid for out of general taxation. But ministers are considering passing the bill on to the BBC as part of this week's comprehensive spending review.

The BBC is an almost independant quango. It raises its own funds through the instrument called the licence fee. People who own a television currently pay £145.50 per year to fund the BBC, and in return they get arguably the finest media organisation in the world.

The BBC itself presents a very real problem for News Ltd. Rupert Murdoch has been complaining for years that the BBC's mere existance robs him of his precious profits, and now that he's backed the Tories in the media (and probably with cash behind closed doors), he and people like him will begin to make the institution suffer which will only get worse and probably lead to the government selling it off (that and the NHS if they can ruin that as well). By cutting the BBC's funding off, firstly by limiting the licence fee, it would then justify "dropping" it as they did with the ABC in Australia, and once the BBC is firmly living in the government's pocket, it then isn't much of a stretch to justify selling it.

What I find particularly hypocritical about News Ltd was these comments he made:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11594936

Mr Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns the Times, the Sun and Sky News, among other media outlets, also said a free society needed an independent press, adding it would "serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted, or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators".

"A free society needed an independent press"? Really? So let me get this straight, if you remove the biggest organisation with a broadly leftist viewpoint, then society would become more free because the remaining "independent press" is all broadly rightist? Does this work in practice?
In Australia we only have two large newspaper organisations; those being News Ltd. and Fairfax. Both of those groups are nominally centre-right newspapers and in places like Adelaide and Brisbane, Fairfax doesn't even run a large scale newspaper.

I really wonder what Rupert means by serving "the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted". Does he mean to say that it serves "the interests of the powerful" ie. him, if the BBC was muted? Also I failt to see how replacing very loud voices such as News Ltd with "bloggers and bloviators" makes society less free. When you consider that in 1920 Australia had 26 metropolitan dailies with 21 independent proprietors, and now has 10 metropolitan dailies with only 2 independent proprietors, can you really say that society was less free in 1920? Likewise in the UK, if the BBC is muted, who do you think is going to move into the void? Would it be Fox News? I sincerly hope not.

One thing that the world does not need is the removal of public broadcasting. The further we move down that road, the more we become like the American market; and the American news market which is mainly dominated by Fox News, has created a nation of really pathetically stupid and insular people. Then again I suppose that's what Mr Murdoch wants, isn't it? A world full of pathetically stupid and insular people who continue to put cash through the till.