BBC hits back after Murdoch attack

[mr friendly guy]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... ion=justin

BBC hits back after Murdoch attack

By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici and staff

The BBC has dimissed criticism by News Corporation's James Murdoch of broadcasting policy in Britain.

In a speech in Edinburgh, Mr Murdoch described the scale of the BBC's operations as a threat to independent journalism.

He compared British media authorities to creationists that believe they always know best.

"There is a land-grab, pure and simple, going on - and in the interests of a free society it should be sternly resisted," he said.

"The land grab is spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling."

The head of the body that governs the BBC, Sir Michael Lyons, says Mr Murdoch is underplaying the importance of his own organisation, Sky, as a competitor.

"I think he's, to some extent, contracted his view of the market, concentrating on some of the commercial organisations which are having severe problems, omitting the fact that Sky continues to get stronger and stronger all the time," he said.

"The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky and not one to be ignored."

But Mr Murdoch says he is having a hard enough time making a buck without having the UK's regulators frustrating his efforts to turn red ink into black.

News Corporation, which James Murdoch runs in Europe and Asia, owns 17 per cent of Britian's ITV, the biggest commercial broadcaster in the UK.

But the Government is not happy with the competition aspects of that investment and is forcing News to get rid of the stake.

"It's true that none of the markets that I've little experience of is completely happy," he said. "But there are things to welcome."

"The regulatory professionalism of Germany, the growth opportunities of India, even France outdoes us in its robust defence of intellectual property.

"The problem with the UK is that it is unhappy in every way: it's the Addams family of world media."

While News Corporation worldwide lost $4 billion last year, Britain's public broadcaster was given more than $9 billion by the taxpayer.

The BBC, which has more money than the rest of the broadcasting industry in the UK put together, will continue to offer its news websites for free.

"Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet," Mr Murdoch said.

"Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it."

This was the guy who once called the Australian Broadcasting Corporation "elitist". The irony of the son of a billionaire calling journalists who are likely paid less than their commercial counterparts (given how several of them switch over to commercial stations) seems to have eluded him. Or is this a case where we need the conservative dictionary to help us, since "elitist" in conservative land seems to refer ONLY to smart people as opposed to elite of any kind.

Back to the article at hand, I don't know enough about the situation in the UK to fully comment, but given Murdoch's awesome record so far, and his blatant ad hominem against "state sponsored news" I am willing to bet this is just sour grapes.

[Darth Tanner]

The BBC, which has more money than the rest of the broadcasting industry in the UK put together, will continue to offer its news websites for free.

Untrue. The BBC budget is 4.3 billion, Skys revenue alone is 4.9 billion. The fact that ones a private company where money is taken out of the system as profit is irrelevant to this.

Britain's public broadcaster was given more than $9 billion by the taxpayer

By TV licence owners. There is a rather important difference.

Essentially the tits just venting over his anticompetitive ways being criticised and being forced to sell his stake in rival broadcasters.

[Rye]

His whole diatribe was essentially "the market guarantees freedom!" and "state-sponsored media are cheating!" and fucking tiresome. Fattest load of bullshit you've ever heard. It was like everything he said, you could just say "oh yeah, FOX News lol" in response to.

[mr friendly guy]

I saw this story on local news. He also mentioned such pearls of wisdom like only profit will guarantee independence. You mean like how his daddy pissed off the Chinese Communist Party who promptly retaliated and Murdoch had to suck up to mend fences so he could try doing business in China? His family just illustrates why profit will not guarantee independence.

[Patrick Degan]

So... because of this:

News Corporation, which James Murdoch runs in Europe and Asia, owns 17 per cent of Britian's ITV, the biggest commercial broadcaster in the UK. But the Government is not happy with the competition aspects of that investment and is forcing News to get rid of the stake.

Mr. Murdoch says this:

"There is a land-grab, pure and simple, going on - and in the interests of a free society it should be sternly resisted," he said. "The land grab is spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling."

Which actually translates into this:

"WAAAAAAH! The mean British government won't let me monopolise the media market the way my daddy's trying to do in America WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!"

[Pelranius]

I read it at first to be Rupert, since that's the first Murdoch to come to mind.

Somehow I think that ITV will be better off without Mr. James Murdoch holding a stake, since his business model seems to be to snivel about the competition 24/7 to get sympathy sex-, I mean sympathy ratings.

[Dartzap]

Apperently Robert Peston doesnt like James Murdoch:Gauruniad

The BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, was involved in an astonishing slanging match with James Murdoch following the News Corporation chief's speech to television executives in Edinburgh where he accused the BBC of mounting a "land grab".

Peston, like other BBC executives, was critical of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV festival on Friday, in which the News Corp chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia described the size and ambitions of the BBC as "chilling".

Murdoch also heavily criticised the media industry regulator, Ofcom, calling for regulation to be scaled down, and accused the government of "dithering" and failing to protect British companies from the consequences of online piracy.

At an official dinner following the speech, Murdoch and Peston – who were sitting with the Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark and the BBC chairman, Sir Michael Lyons – became involved in a discussion about banking deregulation which progressed to the flashpoint of whether or not the BBC was patrician, according to those who were there.

Murdoch apparently banged the table and shouted: "How dare you?" with Peston shouting back: "If you think you can get fucking angry, I can get fucking angry."

A source close to Murdoch, who oversees BSkyB as well as newspapers including the Sun and the Times, described the incident as a "vigorous exchange of views".

In his own speech to the festival yesterday, Peston asked whether there was any "rational basis for believing that withdrawing all regulation and subsidy from the news market would be any less costly to our way of life".

Lyons said British broadcasting was admired around the world "because of its diversity of broadcasters and variety of funding methods. The public tell us that they... trust the BBC and value the wide range of services we provide. The BBC Trust... is here to strengthen the BBC for the benefit of licence fee payers, not to emasculate it on behalf of commercial interests."

BBC1 controller Jay Hunt, a former editor of the channel's Six O'Clock News, also batted away Murdoch's critique that the BBC's news operation was "throttling" the market, preventing its competitors from launching or expanding their own services, particularly online.

"I think we can be pretty confident about what we do," she said.

"Do I think the BBC is fundamentally distorting the market? I don't see any evidence for that. We are required to deliver news on as many platforms as possible."

BBC director of vision Jana Bennett added: "Given the way the audience and the public want to trust their news, I think it would be a regrettable step to go for patrician news as if that is really going to help public debate and civil society."

Industry commentators said that despite the BBC's criticism, others within the industry shared Murdoch's concerns about the corporation, if not his other arguments. "If you strip out the rhetoric and ideology, he is not alone in thinking the BBC is too big and potentially a threat to paid-for journalism," said media expert Steve Hewlett, presenter of Radio 4's The Media Show.

ITV's director of television, channels and online, Peter Fincham, said: "It was one of those speeches where it is possible to agree violently with half of it and disagree with the other half." He declined to say which half he agreed with.

Channel Five chief executive Dawn Airey, who previously worked at Sky, said the arguments in the speech were to be expected, although she added: "The one thing he didn't talk about was the dominance of Sky [in the pay TV market]."

In a further question and answer session yesterday, Murdoch repeated his call for the BBC to be reined in, saying it should have its funding reduced by government so that it becomes "much, much smaller".

Murdoch said the corporation's 24-hour news channels and website were inhibiting the ability of commercial competitors to invest in news. "The news operation is creating enormous problems for the independent news business and it has to be dealt with," he said.

He also repeated his assertion that the media industry was "suffocating" under the burden of too much regulation, with Ofcom currently conducting an investigation into BSkyB's grip on the pay TV market.

But Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards defended the regulator, saying regulation was a "much more subtle set of issues. We are a million miles from the kind of intervention and micromanagement that is sometimes described."

However, Richards said he agreed with Murdoch when it came to the BBC.

"It is one of the big issues of the day where I very much agree with James," he said. "When the BBC started it could get on with it, such as launch BBC1 and BBC2, and there was no market impact. It would be completely different now, we have to accept that."

Sources close to Murdoch said they believed he had emerged with "credibility" following the speech. "People have said he was deliberately provocative, but he made that speech to provoke a debate because he genuinely believes it. He did get people thinking. The overwhelming majority of people support his view on the dimunition of regulation.

"He has emerged with credibility. Even if a lot of people didn't agree with all of his argument, they agreed with some of it."

Murdoch made his Edinburgh speech 20 years after his father Rupert's lecture, which lambasted the "anti-commercial attitudes" of the British broadcasting establishment, particularly the BBC.

Emerged with credibility? My arse has more credibility!

[frogcurry]

The Murdoch's are probably just unhappy with the success of Freeview (in which they are only a minor player) and now the introduction of Freesat (which I don't believe they are in at all): they are rapidly losing the advantages that the Sky service used to offer with the exception of the (now very expensive) football broadcasting. The BBC is a strong player in both of those, although ITV and others have been involved as well. Of course, the fact that Sky have raised the prices considerably over the years to try and gouge their customers more and more even as the competition got stronger didn't help.