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July 20, 2011
Events have moved swiftly for News Corp. In a little over two weeks, News Corp has closed News of the World and shelved its $US12 billion ($A11.3 billion) takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting. The company has come under sustained criticism from both sides of British politics. In the US, it is under investigation by the FBI on speculative allegations that newspaper reporters have targeted victims of the September 11 attacks. New Corp's shares have fallen more than 16 per cent since the scandal broke this month.
The irony is that Murdoch's papers have always feasted on scandals like this, picking over the bones of their victims. Now the Murdoch’s are the ones whose bones are being picked. Murdoch deserves his humiliation given the way he has treated others, exploiting fear and engaged in a “flourishing criminal conspiracy”.
Murdoch remains the most powerful media baron in Australia--- he has 70 per cent of the newspaper readership, plus operational control of monopoly pay TV provider Foxtel. News Ltd uses its corporate muscle for political and commercial advantage and to pursue its political agendas (NBN, carbon, mining tax, Iraq War, regime change etc) aggressively. Economic power is political power.
The standard defence of News Ltd in Australia takes the form of opposing any media inquiry on the grounds that News Ltd is entitled to its media bias because of the freedom of the press. Any attempt to regulate bias represents a stifling of critical comment and extensive scrutiny.
The inference. A media inquiry is an elitist attack on democracy and populism because it is designed to stifle Murdoch's populist challenge to the smug group-think of the anti-democratic Left.
The problem with this defence is that it ignores the extent of media concentration in Australia, which is the real issue; not political bias against the New Class, even if it is offering political propaganda services, disguised thinly as journalism. There are liberal and conservative media outlets and the right to build a noxious empire like Newscorp is an indispensable consequence of freedom of speech. The price that is paid is Murdoch's power being used to shape and empower the culture of tabloid journalism--- venal, voyeuristic, reality-show-obsessed premised on untruths, mass deceptions and blurring the lines between news and entertainment. Murdoch's corporate culture is one of bullying, conformity, manipulation and toadyism.
However the freedom of the press defence is an evasion, because it separates content from structure. Something does need to be done about that 70% print media concentration in Australia. What is of deep concern is the very fusion of politicians, journalists and media owners that govern us - the political class. The collaboration between the executive (ministers) unelected advisors, civil servants and privately owned media at the centre of the state is what needs to be prised open. Too often the political class work together in pursuit of the creation of public consent to policies which benefit them but are against the public interest.
Murdoch's standard business practice is to run roughshod over cross-ownership rules meant to prevent one man or company from having too much power — and then used his lobbying might to get those rules diluted. The Labor and Liberal parties in Australia allowed it to happen--ie, Murdoch fixing deals with government, permitting him a market advantage. As Anthony Barnett says at Open Democracy:
This was the malevolent dishonesty at the heart of Murdochism. He was a close ally of state power who advocated hostility towards it. Worse, he was an ally of the most baleful and threatening aspects of state power, its police and security and the database state, while he attacked its best aspects, regulation, welfare, investment in and defence of the public interest.
Though Murdoch is still a traditional press baron in Australia (unlike the US) his long term strategy is to increase his television interests via Foxtel. He requires considerable influence over the political elite that ultimately takes the decision to grant or withhold licences and concessions in order to do this. The loss making Australian is sustained because it is read by everyone 'whose opinion matters'.--ie., the political class (the fusion of politicians, journalists and media owners).
The hostility to a media inquiry can be seen as the political class not wanting a deep seated inquiry into itself. They are going to defend the integration of media and politics. Their politics consists of an economic agenda based on ‘opening up’ media markets, growth, innovation and promoting ‘light-touch’ regulation. It assumes that deregulation is the sole, or even preferred, route to ensuring growth and innovation whilst avoiding the fusion between politicians and the media.
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Rupert Murdoch represents global capitalism in its Anglo Saxon or neo-liberal version: its a ruthless advocate of the market system, an opponent of regulation and the welfare state of social democracy.
It aims to dismantle regulation and the welfare state. The poor are to punished because as victims they deserved what they got.