Through News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch is the world’s leading newspaper proprietor. His company is also the largest pay TV owner and stood to grow larger still if its bid for BSkyB had been approved. That was aborted following the phone hacking scandal at his newspaper, the News of the World.

Should the newspaper scandal and the TV bid have been connected?

The issue with Rupert Murdoch’s attempted takeover of BSkyB is clearly one of media conglomeration, as well as the notional idea of a ‘fit and proper’ media owner.  The proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation was undoubtedly advantageous for both companies, but the threats to media plurality and the increasing evidence that Murdoch would be seen as ‘exercising power without responsibility’ due to his involvement in the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World meant that the deal’s collapse was seen by many legal commentators (as well as journalists) as inevitable.

The Broadcasting Act 1990 is the first to assert that Ofcom license-holders must be ‘fit and proper’ – but it does not define what is meant by this term.  Indeed, section 253(3) of the Communications Act 2003 also states that applicants must be ‘fit and proper’ and this is once more reiterated in Ofcom’s Change of Control Notification Form in Section 1.  It is only in this document that some guidance is given regarding actual specifications for a ‘fit and proper’ media owner: absence of criminal convictions and civil penalties make up the entirety of the advice given.

However, Jason Chess of media law firm Wiggin examines a loophole in the guidelines, stating that ‘someone with a criminal record “…will not necessarily be prevented from holding a licence”’.  In his experience, he argues that Ofcom’s priority appears to be to find an owner capable of complying with UK broadcasting codes, rather than any previous ethical misdemeanours.

To study the (un)ethical activities of license-holders we must first analyse the make-up of BSkyB’s current shareholders.  At present, only 39% of BSkyB is owned by News Corporation; the remaining 61% is held across a wide range of shareholders nowhere near the scale of News Corporation.  News Corporation is therefore a minority owner of BSkyB, but the single largest block shareholder.  Nevertheless, News Corporation is not the license-holder of BSkyB, nor is technically the absolute controlling interest.

Eleanor Steyn points out that ‘basic principles of corporate liability mean that it is difficult to pin what is done by executives of a company on the company itself, let alone pinning it on another group company’. Indeed, one would have to look at the crossover in board membership between BSkyB and News Corporation, not to mention that of its UK arm, News International, if we were to ascertain whether those suspected of being culpable of grave ethical malpractice would be in the same position of power at BSkyB.

It can be said, then, that the public backlash was against a company thought to have unethical practices across all facets of its operation, yet it can be seen as preposterous to link one aspect of a business with another entirely different enterprise.  Yet David Cameron’s comments that ‘they should stop thinking about mergers when they’ve got to sort out the mess they’ve created’ implies that a multi-national business (and indeed its CEO) is unable to manage other aspects of that business while an internal review is being conducted.

Ed Miliband asked for ‘the purchase of BSkyB [not to] proceed until after the criminal inquiries are complete’, yet Ofcom’s own stringent regulation would have taken care of any broadcasting malpractice, the general journalistic category of which has not yet been proven at the director-level of News Corporation.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Jeremy Hunt, told the House of Lords via Lady Rawlings that there were ‘sufficient safeguards’ in place for Rupert Murdoch’s bid, and advised that it need not be delayed in the wake of the phone-hacking revelations.  Lady Rawlings added that ‘the decision would be made purely on the issue of media plurality’.

The tactical move of reversing the decision to spin-off Sky News, therefore triggering a referral to the Competition Commission, was a shrewd way of placing the takeover bid’s agenda (and all associated media focus) firmly within the sphere of ‘Monopolies and Mergers’, rather than the ethical activity of Rupert Murdoch’s corporation at large.

Rival media organisations, including BT, the Guardian Media Group, Associated Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, the Telegraph Media Group and Northcliffe Media, formed a loose alliance to condemn Murdoch’s takeover even when Sky News was assuredly going to become an independent entity.  A spokesman for ‘The Media Alliance’ stated that the takeover gave News Corporation ‘greater power to restrict or distort competition through cross-promotion, bundling…and distorting the advertising market’.

There can be no doubt that News Corporation’s ultimate desire is to compete with the BBC and other media organisations in buying up programmes and securing sports rights across its infrastructure of broadband and high definition services.  The key to the BSkyB takeover is likely to be financial, with the profit margins of the Sky digital service far outweighing the UK newspaper assets controlled (and owned) by the Murdochs.  However, it is also important to note that The Times, thought to be a print stalwart, makes a huge financial loss and requires ample subsidy from other News International services.  In the same way, Sky News was widely reported as having approximately £20 million of its own losses to deal with annually.  With these examples, Murdoch can be seen as dedicated to news services far more than their bottom lines.

The influence that Rupert Murdoch employs in the political sphere through these news services is well-documented, yet the allegations by Chris Bryant that BSkyB was operated as a ‘fear and favour’ process appears weak in comparison to Murdoch’s proprietorship of three intensely dominant newspapers.  There is no sign that potential ownership of BSkyB can be compared to the power exercised by these titles (not even with the inclusion of Fox News as a broadcast example), owing to Ofcom’s regulations on impartiality.

If the phone-hacking investigation is to highlight missing or inadequate regulation of newspapers, there is no equivalent investigation or admittance into such an issue for broadcasters. The closest investigation was an internal review commissioned by BSkyB’s board into the editorial practices of (and spending of the editorial budget by) Sky News, which concluded ‘no suggestion of impropriety’.

With James Murdoch being current chairman of BSkyB and executive chairman of News International, it is no surprise that 156,000 people and organisations made last-minute submissions to the Government’s public consultation on the proposed bid, yet the link between phone-hacking and the takeover bid for BSkyB is one fabricated by commentators convinced that the Murdoch family run a vast-reaching criminal outfit in which they are able to precisely micromanage every corner of their consortium for maximum nefarious gain.  Although it cannot be argued that the Murdochs are free of responsibility for the illegal undertakings by their employees, they certainly do not fall foul of all the legal tests set for both their print and broadcasting ventures.

UPDATE (4/2/2012): Roy‘s feedback – Well, Nick, this is a well argued polemic, clearly well researched. I don’t agree with you, but that’s beside the point in terms of the marking. I’d just like you to consider the implications of media being concentrated in too few hands, regardless of whether it involves Murdoch. Should there be a cut-off point in terms of size. Anyway, it’s a good read.

Ordinarily, I’d jump to the defense of those who have been wronged by sloppy reporting, but the idea of ‘defamation’ really winds me up.  Okay, Sheryl, so The People, The Mirror and whatever other toilet-roll rag had your face on the front page instead of some actual global issue, but they were only quoting from two regrettably limited perspectives.  Just because they didn’t flash their cash in your face for you to ‘tell your side of the story’ doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t ‘true’.  The report truthfully quoted what Gazza/Gazza’s mum said in an interview.  If they were ill-informed, why don’t you just write to the PCC or get your rightful response.  Hell, pocket some of the red-top’s blood money and do one of their ‘tell-alls’.  But to sue them for defamation, when throughout the programme no-one ever mentions any explicit effects apart from her daughter being caught up in some ‘nasty words at school’ seems a little bit extreme.  She tearfully puts her house on the market to contribute to her ‘fighting fund’, while her lawyer eggs her on!  Am I the only one that thought every single person in this programme stank of self-interest and hypocrisy?

Lembit Opik blames The Sunday Times for him losing the election, his legal adviser/best mate blames the UK legal system for allowing The Sunday Times to have an opinion section, and a completely random ‘local politician’ (who’s clearly not Lembit, because he’s out of a job) starts getting all meta-philosophical about smoke, fires and smokescreens.  The barrister they find to take the case (because his lawyer is apparently all out of ideas) pretty much tells Lembit that you can’t get paid for a spread in Hello! and then expect to remain out of the public eye. Lembit claims he only did the piece in Hello! because The Mirror kept following him (presumably in case he did some impromptu stand-up and we all missed it) and Hello! hasn’t printed anything libellous about him.  Except he’s probably never been featured in Hello! before.  And he probably didn’t see the article before it went to print, so they actually got lucky and managed to escape Lembit’s Super Libel Locator™.  (No-one mentions Sheryl Gascoigne’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity. last year.)

I agree with Sam Wollaston’s review in The Guardian, here: ‘the libel lawyers are given a very easy ride’, but by contrast UK libel law is apparently too soft on the press, especially on hard working UK citizens, of which Lembit is only one of 65 million.  I’ll scoot over the bit where he rides to a consultation meeting on a Segway, continues his battle against unemployment by auditioning to be an after-dinner speaker and constructs two skilfully dull anagrams of his name, making a big deal out of the fact he’s Estonian. (Remember that, it’ll be important in a minute).

The reason libel law is so infuriating is because the burden of proof lies on the defendant to prove that their claims are true.  In a sense, you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.  If this fact had been made clear at the top of the programme, we’d all be thinking Sheryl and Lembit are on their merry way to victory.  The reason I suspect Disembodied VoiceOver didn’t make this point was because in Sheryl’s case, the claims might not have been true but they were true to what was said in the interview.  As for Lembit, well it was an opinion piece by Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times’ answer to Littlejohn.   Although you can argue he shouldn’t be given a platform in the first place, the views are his own and clearly identified as such, and therefore his views only conform to the warped sense of truth that resides in his head alongside all his favourite ‘miserable, seaweed munching‘ Welsh people who presumably live in the Lost City of Atlantis, just underneath Barry Island.

A parade of various legal-eagles flicks through so many printouts of publications I forget which case is which, who is actually a lawyer, who’s getting paid and who’s fault it might be.  Each defendant seems to want the press shut down, and I nearly started a game where every time I heard the word ‘true’, I’d burn one of the books on reliability and narrative I’ve been glued to for the past few months.  So, The Sunday Times is at fault because they imply Lembit has an active love life, and infers that he spends more time on his love life than on his career. Apparently, identifiying Lembit as Estonian is as bad as calling him a Jew – oh, hold on, aren’t you implying that ‘Jew’ is a derogatory term, and therefore we can infer that this legal advisor is anti-Semitic?  No, sorry, it’s more deplorable that all the publications are playing for time with their evidence submission deadlines and a few even ask for extensions to really piss off The Little Guy.  The irony here, pointed out by our Sheryl, is that these are people whose publications are totally reliant on working to deadline, yet the judge accepts their difficult time restraints in multi-tasking.  Scathing.

The programme switches from a deep and fascinating debate on press ethics (‘I don’t know why they do it’) to some sort of vindictive retaliation where the only suitable retribution and vindication is cold hard cash.  Sheryl brings home the bacon because The Other Side’s witnesses never turn up, to which her sly double-barrelled barrister mentions that one witness was probably Gazza, and he’s not the most reliable sort – of course he manages to say this without any implication or possible inferral, using some sort of legal witchcraft.

Sheryl gets £30k and an apology mumbled in open court, while being promised a tiny printed retraction on the same page that Gazza’s face once beamed out from.  But it’s okay, because it probably cost the other side £50k, which apparently ‘isn’t much, but it must’ve hurt their pocket somewhere’.  I’ll take your word on that, Sheryl.  You’re the expert.  She cracks open the champagne, her house is taken off the market and it’s another victory for the ordinary ex-wife of one of the nation’s most famous former footballers.  But surely the BBC could’ve contracted Lembit for another few episodes of Have I Got News For You and taken far more pot-shots at News International without trying to make us feel sorry for him losing his seat in Parliament and claiming it was all Rupert Murdoch’s fault.  I half-expected Lembit to say that his phone was bugged, too.  Oh well, there’s always the next episode in the series – we’ve got Uri Geller, Danielle Lloyd and George Galloway to get through, yet.

Panorama: Smoking and the Bandits
Date: March 7, 2011
Length: 29:00
First broadcast on BBC One, then made available online through BBC iPlayer.

This investigation focusses on the financial aspect of illegal smoking imports, identifying tax evasion and highlighting the national deficit directly affecting ‘you’ (the viewer).  Sam Poling emphatically notes what ‘we’ will pay in rising NHS costs and to HMRC in order to keep both smokers and non-smokers interested.  The variety of cinematic techniques serves to make the broadcast dramatic – jump-cuts, split-screen and atmospheric music are all intermittently employed.

To convey honesty in an interview with an independent expert there are shots which show lighting and camera equipment – breaking down the fourth wall (of the fourth estate!).  The top of the programme accompanies a raid on a tenement flat, however we are never told the consequences or sentencing of those arrested.

The episode tracks counterfeit imported cigarettes, with a subsequent investigation into the toxicity of the goods, using ‘exclusive secret footage’.  The stock footage is of variable quality and therefore of indeterminable age – the reliability of the report becomes less important than the action of the narrative. Poling admits ‘I did not know the importance of these papers then’ – giving rise to a notion of selective revelation by the narrator for a heightened sense of drama.

From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC)
Date: March 10, 2011
Length: 28:18
First broadcast on Radio 4, then made available as a podcast.

One of Radio 4’s oldest flagship broadcasts, the entire premise of the programme feels like a relic from the World Service’s war-time stereotype.  The received pronunciation and slow, scripted speech does little to endorse its mission to ‘bring a personal perspective to world news’.  Instead, these professional journalists and correspondents present an anecdotal view of ‘my friend Bernard’ in the Ivory Coast and the café preferences of the driver of the press vehicle in Libya.

Yet without these snapshots, we would be unable to understand the instantaneous fact-driven news which chooses only headline developments.  The benefit is of an explorative journalist who is able to not just chase expert sources to back up his lead but also provide a context into sometimes the seemingly insignificant, the unexpected and the mundane.

These tales are treated with equal weight – Kate Adie at the top of the programme does not discriminate between life in a civil warzone and a band ‘playing their way out of Poverty’ in the Congo, resisting temptations to state ‘and finally…’ in that derogatory offbeat newsreader cliché.  FOOC points to its wider relevance as a microcosmic tale of the area which that correspondent is charged with covering.

As I sit in my dressing-gown at my laptop at midday, with umpteen tabs open in Firefox, I often find myself the brunt of my housemates’ ridicule. Who am I? Am I some sort of 21st-Century Oscar Wilde, with the complete works of John Milton available to peruse on my iPhone 4? Am I a hardcore blogger, born at the dawn of the nineties and looking for my next conspiracy theory? No, I’m a journalist, and I’ve learned that you’ve got to stay in almost as much as you’ve got to go out.

Without making the case that the new era of Multimedia Journalists™ are the poor man’s polymaths (Andy Halls has perhaps already alluded to this), I’m simply saying that to be a successful journalist, one must absorb a vast amount of information.

And now, a lot of that can be done with a solid internet connection. As a current affairs journalist, you’re supposed to know more than the average person does about the last time there was a large oil spill, what percentage of cuts were laid on in 1979, and what happens when your travel company isn’t ABTA-certified. Sometimes you’ve got to do a bit of research (cross-referenced and checked, naturally) before you hit the road with some knee-jerk questions.

It is a careful compromise between scholarly research and the most heinous of journalistic crimes: recycling from other sources. I suppose, as an English Literature undergraduate, my perspective of being an aspiring journalist is balanced with my current academic discipline. To be an effective journalist, one must have the ability to reflect a readership, so it helps to know what’s going on out there. Yes, I understand that a lot of what goes on can be learned from your sources on the street, but if you’re out there all the time, then you’ll forget that Question Time’s been on.

Some student journos I know (admittedly, not very good ones), have little knowledge of current affairs. They’re too busy perfecting the standfirst on their magnum opus exposé to have a flick through the Guardian, and their homepage is their perpetually-refreshing e-mail account and the Oxford English Thesaurus rather than BBC News and Twitter’s trending topics.

I’m not a seasoned Foreign Correspondent for the BBC, and I don’t have a newswire on my desktop, so I rely on other media to feed me some semblance of what’s going on. If I see some half-baked semi-scoop in the Staines Informer, chances are I’ll go out and follow it up, and probably come up with something more informative. Speaking of which, It’s just arrived on the doorstep, so I’m going to put the kettle on and go and pick it up.

Sure, the first half of my day has been spent indoors, but I won’t be spending the rest of it playing catch-up. I now know exactly where to go, who to contact, and about what.

I went to Cyprus, which was fine.  Relaxing, reading my pre-University reading list, sun, sea, sand…

I went to see underOATH at The Astoria, but really went for the support band, Envy on the Coast, who I met after the gig.

You know what? I can’t be bothered to do this chronologically.  We’re going for a stream-of-consciousness thing, now.

I’m at university.  Royal Holloway, University of London.  It’s in Egham, really.  Freshers’ Week?  That was dull, considering I expected a debaucherous seven-day festival.  Plus, everyone goes home at the weekend.

Now that was a depressing start to the term, as I learned a few home truths: it’s quicker for me to get to London (and more direct) from Godalming than Egham; everyone goes home at the weekend; our “Special Guest” at the Freshers’ Ball was Razorlike.

No, not Razorlight, but their tribute band.  And that was the most interesting event our Union had to offer.

My flat is great, though.  Only a year old, the block is great – eight flats to a kitchen, spacious, modern, each with en suite.  Granted, it’s not Founder‘s, but unlike their catered, Grade I-listed 19th Century castle (Serbian hostel-esque accommodation), we have internet and our own shower.  You can weigh that one up yourself.  Anyway, everyone here is lovely, and my eight flatmates (six ladies, two men) are equally fun.  Of note, we managed to get almost the whole block in our kitchen for a warming par-tay on the first night.  That’s about thirty-five people.  The second night we went out on a mediocre pub crawl, so we came home early and stole a To Let sign.

If you want to write to me: Tuke Hall, F-3A-05.  That’s block F, on the third floor, on the right next to our kitchen. Just buzz and I’ll let you in, and you can see my room.  It looks a bit like this:

Anyway, after the ‘hysteria’ of Freshers’ Week, this ‘teaching and learning’ part of university began.  I’ve got Wednesdays and Thursdays off, and 5 lectures and 5 seminars around that.  It’s not particularly intensive, either – most notably there was a “student” in my Introduction To Sonnets lecture who learned for the first time that Shakespeare wrote sonnets.  Who knew?

At some point over the first three weeks, I’ve come down with a terrible, incurable case of Freshers’ Fever. As well as the flu, it involves signing up to…everything.  It’s also identified as ‘being a bit of a whore’ and may include ‘spreading oneself too thin’.

So, my first port of call, was reputable and successful independent (i.e. no money from the SU, and therefore allowed to slag off the SU if we want) student newspaper, The Founder.  Inexplicably, surprisingly, ecstatically, I’m News Editor.  And the only Fresher on the Editorial Board.  Wrote my first article and it made it onto (the left hand side of) the front page.  Hear that ma?  I’m a real (student) journalist.  My NUJ press pass is in the post and everything.

Next stop, Insanity Radio, an official Student’s Union media outlet.  After a cock-up with ringing me, I didn’t manage to get a presenter slot (bah!), but hopefully I’ll be on the News Show.  See a developing theme? Mm.  I’m on the music team for Insanity, too, which gets me lots of free CDs I have to review and I’m interviewing Pause.Break.Riot on 23rd October. Exciting.

Okay, so I’m disillusioned with the Union.  What do I do about it? Become Halls Representative for Tuke, Butler and Williamson, Student Representative for the Media/Communications sub-committee and Commercial Services sub-committee, obviously (?!!).  But I did make sure I didn’t nominate myself for First Year Rep.  That’s a bit too much.

I overslept and missed all team trials in my first week (not that I was ever in any team at RGS), but my heart’s really in this journalism lark, which you already knew about me, anyway.  So I dropped out of the Drama Society’s chorus role they gave me, and inexplicably got embroiled in the Media Society, becoming Communications Officer.  I only went to their AGM because my seminar was next door.  I swear, apart from The Founder and Insanity Radio (maybe the SU sub-par publication The Orbital ‘magazine’), I didn’t really want to do anything else.

My sleeping patterns now revolve around going to bed at close to five every morning, which means my Critical Practice essay on Homer for Friday is being done….now.  Pope vs. Fagles, anyone?

Oh, food.  I always forget about that. Having your own kitchen is great, and I do love cooking, but I’ve learned to love the simplicity and efficiency of ready meals.

Remove sleeve. Pierce film.

Fantastic.