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James Murdoch Criticizes BBC For Providing "Free News"
Hugh Pickens writes "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a 'dominant' BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. 'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch. 'The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.' In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US." Note that James Murdoch is the son of Rupert Murdoch.
That is what is threatening the plurality and independence of news. Sounds to me like the guy doesn't want plurality, he just doesn't want competition.
The fact is that the BBC is known for its objectivity. I know a lot of American who only get their news from there because they regard the American press as either too liberal or too conservative. (Or more often than not, too sensationalistic or too "fluffy.")
That's OK, I criticize James Murdoch's News Corporation for providing false news.
I know which I would rather not be accused of.
As a company that has done a lot to destroy fair and good reporting everywhere it goes, News Corp should NOT be listened to as an expert on what will produce 'Fair and Balanced' news. It certainly takes more than calling it 'Fair and Balanced', as their TV station Fox News is ample proof of. Sure, the BBC may have some problems, and may sometimes have some bias, but it still remains by far one of the best and most carefully researched news agencies on the planet. If News Corp had ever shown itself capable of ever producing a decent news organization, they might be worth listening to.
As it is, I think the Murdochs are just upset that a REAL news group keeps them from controlling the news. They want power. If there were anything else I could say to make this a stronger condemnation of News Corp, I would. They are really that bad. They are the evilness that Microsoft only aspires to.
Qxe4
The BBC reporting on someone saying the BBC is shit.
That sort of objectivity is why they need to survive just as they are.
I write bullshit
This is a bit rich coming from a Murdoch, a family have the greatest impact on British public life. Many votes are swayed according to what the sun says. And whats more the family managed to reduce "The Times" from a great pillar of the establishment to the least respected broadsheet.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
'The people' have already paid for the BBC via their TV license fees, it is in no way 'free'.
Why should they pay again just because Murdoch doesn't like the competition?
Hey Murdoch, I am a UK BBC licence fee payer and I have no problems with what the BBC is doing with my cash with regards to their news provisions, especially their excellent news Web site.
You don't like what they are doing with my cash? Tough - if you don't like it, get another job.
Yours etc..
AT&ROFLMAO
'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch.
Murdoch isn't selling anything I want to pay for. Now, if the BBC charges for its content, I would give serious consideration to doing so. There -- free market in action!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What many people don't understand is that companies don't want to compete. Ideally, they want to form a monopoly and then stop innovating (because that's a cost) and raise prices (because that's profit). If they can't form a monopoly, they want to form a cartel with their main rivals. Murdoch and Son realize they can't buy the BBC, so they're taking the cartel approach whining about how they "can't compete". Actually what they're saying is, "Our plan to raise prices won't work, as long as someone doesn't. Join the news cartel, and we'll all profit."
The Internet is all about free access to information and news. The BBC, PBS, NPR, etc are all public organizations that give out free information anyway and usually funded by the government and donations.
News Media Corp is a private corporation and doesn't seem to get the free news and free information philosophy of the Internet. If they charge for access to news and information they will suffer for it. Then only the wealthy will be able to access it, and some of the wealthy will refuse to pay and go to free sources instead.
Also when a news or information source is pay only and private, it cannot be used for citations anymore as a professor cannot log on to verify the source because they cannot afford the fees to every pay source of news and information and usually require the student to use the sources that the college provides for peer reviewed news articles and papers.
Murdoch is shooting himself in the foot with such a move.
Well you don't need to pay the license fee to listen to BBC radio broadcasts, or to read news on the BBC website. And that's the way it should be. Some things should just be free for everybody, like education, libraries and access to the basic information about what's going on in the world around you (ie. news).
I find their news to be far more balanced and fair than any commercial operator I've encountered, as they're not beholden to their advertisers and contributers and rather to their audience. A perfect example being the current debate in America about socialized healthcare.
First we had reports about how the NHS was being used as an example of how socialized healthcare doesn't work, then reports on the anger this caused in the British populace (my God I was angry), then reports on the isolated incidents where the NHS has failed people.
Nowhere else have I found a more balanced and fair news outlet and I'm eternally grateful that we have our wonderful British Broadcasting Corporation.
It says a lot that James Murdoch has felt he had to attack the BBC to protect his business interests.
If a member of the Murdoch family is criticizing you, you're probably doing something right.
Just for the record, I love the BBC and I love the NHS; nuts to anyone who thinks they're somehow evil.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
"owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers"
Sorry you can't call The Sun a 'newspaper'! Seriously, a publication who's most popular story today is entitled "I had walk with a yeti on holiday"??
Good news coverage is worth paying for. Unfortunately for Murdoch, with the sole exception of the Wall Street Journal, none of his holdings produce good journalism. Because with the exception of the Journal, everything covered in his TV stations or newspapers I can find in three hundred other locations on the web, in other newspapers, or on other TV stations. Because its all reworked AP stories. Good in-depth journalism died years ago, and now all we get from 99.9999999 percent of US media sources, including Murdoch's, is cookie-cutter stories.
If Murdoch really expects me to pay, then he's going to have to improve journalism at his own holdings and give me original information I can't find anywhere else. When he can do that, I'll pay (as I do for the WSJ now). Until then, not a chance in hell.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Uh-oh. Somebody better tell Perrier, Evian, Pellegrino et al that it's impossible for them to make money by selling water!
So.. it has come to this
So the scion of the world's most notorious propagandist has the audacity to speak publicly about media policy.
If voters wish their government to do something for them, they vote for politicians that promise it, and it gets done. Those in England have voted to have a "public option" for news. Some will say that because it's "government owned" its objectivity cannot be trusted, and this is indeed a danger, just as it is a danger that privately owned media cannot be trusted, let alone under the laissez faire regulation regime that Murdoch Sr. and Jr. lobby for. Power is power, and it is not a foregone conclusion that power controlled by elected representatives is more dangerous than power controlled by corporate sponsors or the whims of billionaires.
It's reasonable that a government-run news organization could do a better job than a privately run organization. Similarly for electric power, firefighting services, courts, schools, etc. It's not guaranteed to succeed, but there is no fundamental problem with it in principle, as long as a nation has a free press (the government can say what they like, but so can everyone else).
The Murdoch's underscore the point by running some of the most servile and ludicrous propaganda instruments in mass media today. For those concerned about the difficulty of competing with the government to make news, one must simply examine reality to see how it is done. Amusingly, Murdoch himself is not always concerned with profit - he runs propaganda instruments such as the New York Post in the red simply to gain influence and push competitors out of business.
While some could make this story into a discussion about the principles of government, media and democracy, that would be elevating Murdoch's ploy far above what it is: a transparent attempt to destroy another competitor and gain even more unified control over the world's mass media. It is breathtakingly hypocritical on his part to cloak it in the rhetoric he does.
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Where is my opt-out?
You don't need to own a TV. Or live in the UK. Either will work just fine for getting you out of paying the license fee.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I like the BBC. Murdoch's an idiot.
Rupert Murdoch may be many things. He's an entirely amoral, self-serving piece of shit who as far as I can tell has never believed in, stood for, or even demonstrated any interest in anything other than furthering his own business interests. Everything else is a means to that end. He's shown no compunction in repeatedly subverting journalistic integrity to promote his own business agenda.
The recent Silvio Berlusconi scandals were promoted by his former ally Murdoch, when Berlusconi made moves to tax Murdoch's Sky Italia satellite TV network less favourably. Yes, Berlusconi is just as bad, but that's beside the point- the fact that Murdoch can use the might of his own network to wage a partisan campaign against him is hardly A Good Thing.
It's been clear for a long time that Murdoch Sr hates the BBC because it's competition, and not because of any higher principle, regardless of what he likes to claim. Like the Berlusconi case, it's clear he's quite happy for his mouthpieces to sacrifice journalistic integrity in favour of going after his enemies.
Anyway, back to the point. Murdoch may be many things, but he's not an idiot. Quite the opposite. His one-dimensional focus and complete absence of any principles have made him an extremely shrewd businessman.
I wouldn't count him out too soon, any more than I'd finish the cancer drugs halfway through the course because the tumour hadn't been quite as aggressive this week.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
A quote from Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations 1776, is the best answer on James Murdoch worry for News Corporation's $32.996 billion USD revenue:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Don't tell me it's News Corp. vs. Disney -- I won't know who to root against. I mean, that's like the media conglomerate edition of Alien vs. Predator!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Untrue. The BBC is funded solely through the license fee, sales of it's programmes abroad, and sales of other materials.
It receives no government funds. It is no more answerable to the government than any other media organisation. It pays it's taxes. It also has a unique lack of pressure from external commercial interests.
everyone that purchases a TV in Britain [has] to support the BBC, whether they actually watch it or not.
Yes, this is true. But the BBC in turn provides such an excellent benchmark that all the other FTA broadcasters in the UK have to raise their game, so it arguably has a positive effect on your viewing even if you don't watch it. Just the reduction in commercial break sizes (a maximum average of 12 minutes, versus about 18 minutes in the USA) is worth the license fee, which is very small compared to the costs of equivalent offerings.
Imagine if the USA had an equivalent, independent, federally mandated institution (PBS is federally funded and thus is not independent). It could either produce about 4 times as much content or cost half the money .. and still produce twice as much content. And that's compared to....
And that's all commercial free , with a mandate to inform, educate, and entertain.
Prostitutes are demanding that everybody else stop providing sex for free, as it reduces the demand for their paid services.
Murdoch Senior had a nasty habit at kicking the BBC in a similar manner. Nice to see Junior hasn't bothered to develop his own consciousness and has merely cloned his dad's. Seriously these rants translate as little more than a vain attempt to undermine the competition with cheap rhetoric designed to increase profit and feed ignorance. I mean when Dad's worth an estimated $4 billion world domination is about the only thing left to try, and the BBC as an a mostly impartial and independent media service is obviously standing in the way.
Anyone who is in any way swayed by Murdoch Junior's argument needs to read Noam Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent and then needs to wake up to the fact that the BBC is perhaps the one media outlet that stands in the way of the frightening picture this book paints. After all the BBC is in a different industry in that they're about providing media to their audiences and news to the public, not audiences to their advertisers and propaganda to their punters.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
That's fairly easy to see on the mainstream new world order bilderberger news. Government press official being quoted..odds on to be lying, that would be anyone in the executive branch. It gets accepted as gospel and repuked back at you by the newsies, no matter how completely improbable or out to lunch sounding.
In the legislative branch, elected reps and so on, odds are..clueless and just drunkenly mumbling stuff they have no idea about whatsoever based on the lies some biz schmuck or lobbist/PR flack told them or their cheaply bribed off "aides" to say and that they sorta half remember. They just stick you with that stuff.
News reporter interviewing or quoting the big big biz schmuck..odds on lying, even if lie is suspected, reporter with blowdried hair just flashes the big smiles and repukes it back, sometimes with asinine "analysis" later one by a roundtable of previous and now much older blow dried and lacquered (and plastered) bilderberger re-pukers. They are now distinguished drunk old re-pukers.
All the odds of lying go up drastically if the subject has to do with a lot of money (the more the money amount is, the more are the odds of the principles involved lying about it somehow, current example: any dang thing whatsoever from the Fed or Treasury or casino bank) or some event or another which would prove to be an embarrassment or illegality committed.
THOSE latter two are pretty much pure lies all the time, the easiest to see. As in, when is the last time anyone official just slap admitted to guilt or major screwup right off the bat? Never, ever, ever, nevah happens, goes from the simple small town cop being a sadist beast and the chief defending his actions automatically, while everyone can stare at the bloody videotape, all the way to lying about profound events with huge international repercussions like the "tonkin gulf attack" which never happened, or the "huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and saddam and osama both did 911 together honest we swear it they even bunk together on piles of yellowcake and the robot drone planes with biowarfare agents are warmed up ready to blast amerika in 45 minutes" type lies and so on.
The older I get the more cynical I get about this stuff because eventually the truth comes out about this or that big deal from the past, even if it takes decades, and you then realize how *much* you've been lied to in the past by the press, the controlled press I mean, the ones just that repuke the lies fed to them.
My default these days is..they are lying. Much safer to assume that than not.
Deliberate lies, or lies of omission, either or both mixed together. What they leave out that is important and DON'T report about is usually the very best stuff, the most important to know about. Or they get sorta sneaky about it, pump up some inane story about some drug addled celebrity hijinks (Britney pregnant with Michael's frozen sperm!! Wow! Some team scored some number that is a bigger number than this other team!! And that's a record!! that sorta drivel..), run with that for days, and stick the important stuff (if they cover it at all) with barely ten words to cover it buried in the newscast with a ten second low key soundbite or published on page 17, section D in the paper.
Modern news from all the big boys has about as much truth to it as big time rasslin'. It's controlled, orchestrated and scripted, designed to do anything BUT inform. At the best, cutting them tons of slack which they don't deserve, especially the public airwave hijack folks, it's designed to entertain and sell you little purple pills and soap flakes and over priced ego big dick shiny cars, at the worst, and what I think is the major reason it even continues in the form it is today, is it is deliberate propaganda to keep the serfs faked out, and to keep them occupied with each other and pointing fingers at each other for someone to blame for all their mostly self inflicted wo
The WSJ does produce decent news, and he's busy trying to stop that, because since he's had it, its gone down hill like hell.
Seriously, some of the best quality media comes out of the independant but govt owned sources, the BBC in the UK, ABC & SBS in Australia, the CBC in Canada and so one. Because these news sources are largely empowered (not fully so CBC & SBS, but mostly) to operate without bowing down to advertisers and big corporate interests, and LARGELY the govts have backed off from interfering with their autonomy (Oh they try, but the stations tend to resist). We actually need that. In Australia the ABC have proven their govt independence by shows like 4 Corners that have always been prepared to attack the government when it behaves badly , and interestingly in ways the commercial TV stations seem reluctant to. The SBS provides foreign and experimental programming that would never be shown by the bottom-line conscious commercial shows. And at a time when commercial TV is completely debased by ridiculous reality shows and idiotic right wing "current affairs" (usually consisting of harrassing poor people for being on welfare and the like) , the ABC provides high class drama, news, documentaries and so on.
Seriously Murdoch can go fuck himself. His shitty newspapers spread hate and fear in our community with its attacks on minorities and poor people, and he's done the same in the US with the gutteral fox news service. He's got no right to complain if nobody wants to pay for his "news". Make a non shit product and people might pay for it. Its not govt money that makes the BBC popular, its the fact that the alternatives are so fucking dismal.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.