I think the conclusion of this paragraph by Daniel Johnson is overly gloomy:
“The present hysteria obscures the fact that the most unaccountable power in the British media culture is not News Corp. but the BBC. Funded by a poll tax, driven by a leftist mindset, and ruthless in its use of monopoly power, the BBC has been using its saturation coverage of the phone-hacking story to destroy its main competitor. If the BBC succeeds in its aim of driving News Corp. out of the UK market, the British public will be the losers. There is a real danger that the case for the free market, Judeo-Christian values, and Western civilization will no longer be made in Britain.”
I am not so concerned as Johnson is. If Murdoch did pack it in, leaving a vacumn in the sort of space he has filled, someone else could and would fill it. I think that in the age of the internet and a profusion of blogs and other outlets, that the barriers to entry into the media business have been dramatically lowered.
Like Johnson, I have not joined in the general baying for Murdoch’s blood, sensing that some of those who wanted him done down were looking to strengthen the armlock of the BBC and throw out an upstart who upset their cozy world. (My goodness, he wasn’t even Bwitish!). Other news organisations besides those run by Murdoch have done bad things, and given the weaknesses of any organisations run by human beings, those failings will remain. The best insurance against such abuses is the widest possible array of choice in media so that consumer power dominates. Remember, Murdoch decided to shut down the News of the World when advertisers threatened to pull the plug on him. Subscribers can and did cancel on him. With the BBC licence fee, there is no such way that irate consumers of television can vote with their wallets.
Anyway, here’s another paragraph from Johnson that I liked:
“How precisely the closure of a newspaper serves the cause of liberty, such commentators cannot say, any more than they can justify their implied comparison with the butchers of Tripoli and Damascus of the man who not only gave the British press a new lease of life by defeating the print unions, but also lavished tabloid profits on the upscale Times and the highbrow Times Literary Supplement for over 30 years. The News of the World, though beneath the contempt of today’s pundits, was loved by George Orwell. He begins his great essay “The Decline of the English Murder” by evoking a scene of postprandial bliss: a working-class Englishman following his Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding by opening the News of the World to read about the latest, most lurid murders.”
On an optimistic note, I’d add that one of the trail-blazers in new media, Glenn Reynolds, marks 10 years of Instapundit today. Well done him. All hail to the King of Knoxville.
Daniel Johnson has got it in one.
And I’m not so confident in the ability of free enterprise competition to flourish in a statist-run environment.
They smashed up Murdoch.
Not until the state organs topple under their own inefficiency and rotten-ness does the green grass of enterprise begin to flourish again.
And even then, because of the left over collectivist poison, it can be a very warped setup.
Like capitalism in post-Soviet Russia.
While I’m pleased to see the fall of Murdock, he has been running a blackmail syndicate for the past 30 years, I’m not that worried by the BBC, their days are numbered. The SNP want to break up the Beeb by keeping the license fee raised in Scotland in Scotland. It is only a matter of time before they succeed, and when they do that is the beginning of the end for the Beeb.
“Respondeat Superior”, these people didn’t do what they did because they were personally interested and just did it on company time, it was for the company, for a story and for Murdoch.
The BBC is why I think of Great Britain as an evil empire. The USSR may be gone, but the spirit that possessed it has found a new home.
For those who foresee the demise of the BBC, good luck with that. I expect it will happen about the same time that Oxford is looted and burned to the ground.
No objections to the anti-BBC rant, and neither do I agree that closing down newspapers (or shooting innocent members of the public) is “serving the cause of liberty”.
But, lets be brutally honest, the News of the World was not a “newspaper” by any stretch of the imagination, especially in an argument about liberty.
Just like some “elder” North London armed mobster is not an “innocent person” either, if we get out of our armchairs for a moment, put our intellectual study of utopian Hayek theory to one side, and entertain the real world for a while, neither this rag or that gangster are helping any liberal cause whatsoever, both are tools of thuggish behaviour (corporate and criminal), and we are better off without them.
Today’s working class NotW reader is probably munching on corporate sh*tburgers and reading some made up story about the latest reality show starlet or away game footballer, written as an excuse for some photo of a scantily clad dolly bird to be printed, not Orwellian material exactly.
What is dead right is the hat tip to the flourishing “new media”, what we are witnessing is the early death throws of the Murdoch Empire, and indeed, the Socialist Republic of Broadcasting House too, time to pull up a deckchair and enjoy the show.
A lot of illiterates learn to read, reading comics, Ian F4.
You sound distinctly elitist 🙂
Is not free market libertarianism to provide the goods and services that people want to buy?
The rest of the “social balance” can be left alone to sort itself out.
As things are now it is game set and love to the empire.
Sure, the ultimately unsustainable empire, but it can take a long time!
Ian F4.
Where did I read Fraser Nelson exposure of the so called “massive cuts” of Mr Cameron and co.
In the Spectator?
No – I (like millions of other people) read about this in the News of the World – which was left on the site I work at.
“The News of the World is not a newspaper” – it is was a lot better than the “Times” which is full of leftists (such as A.K.).
On hacking….
If hacking is the reason for the witchhunt….
Why has the BBC not devoted equal time to going after the Trinity Mirror group – which “hacked” and “blagged” far more?
And why has it not gone after the “Guardian” at all?
Or do people pretend not to know that Guardian types have had lots of telephones hacked?
Indeed the Guardian (joined at the hip with the New York Times) led the charge against News of the World hacking – but not its own.
This is political – totally political.
And the real target is not the News of the World or even the Sun.
The real target is Fox News.
Get rid of Rupert M. (who has tolerated dissent on Fox News – even though he is NOT a dissentor himself), and you can get at Fox News.
That is what it is about.
And anyone who comes out with the “you are paranoid” response.
Listen to what the leftists are themselves saying. It is not difficult to find out – I have not had to “hack” any mobile telephones in order to know.