MURDOCH CONCENTRATION OF OWNERSHIP AND FLAK

NOV 2020 MURDOCH GRIP ON AUSTRALIA TIGHTENS

Guardian.

I've read a lot of books on Rupert Murdoch - and would suggest anyone interested in business would enjoy doing the same. Some might argue against calling him a business genius (I think he is) but at minimum he's a seriously smart, successful businessman.

He took shareholdings in two Australian newspapers left by his father and built that up into one of the biggest global media empires. He has now sold off big chunks of that but has kept the news side of it: Fox News and 100s of newspapers (plus book publishers) across the globe. 

This gives him considerable political power and influence, though there is much doubt if any of his sons or daughter will quite follow in his footsteps - with James Murdoch shockingly quitting the Murdoch media empire over what he described as the misinformation spread by his father's media outlets.

I'll gather here some resources on this specific topic, the Murdoch empire and the more general point about concentration of ownership - which of course is one the five filters in Chomsky's propaganda model. The fact that the UKs voluntary self-regulator for the press, IPSO (and its various predecessors), doesn't consider that part of its remit is a good example of Murdoch power.

In the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal, and the advertiser boycott fuelled by furious public opinion in the UK (these online campaigns are a great example of web 2.0 as an alternative source of regulation, and the failure of existing regulation - the PCC actually CONDEMNED The Guardian for reporting the story!!!), the Conservative government was forced to set up the Leveson Inquiry. A senior judge would investigate the story of phone hacking and wider malpractice within the press industry, and present his recommendations to Parliament.

He was also meant to go on to investigate the links between the press and police, and press and politicians - but PM David Cameron blocked this, despite Labour, Lib Dems, SNP all being in favour of this. He also rejected most of Leveson's recommendations, especially creating a semi-statutory new regulator run through the Privy Council, not a law passed by Parliament.

At the Leveson Inquiry the likes of ex-PM Gordon Brown would give extraordinary testimony, under oath, of how he'd been bullied and threatened by the Murdoch press - while press owners like Richard Desmond would give quite shocking testimony themselves - the famous "ethics, what are ethics" response.

Here's a start then, a report on the attempt of former Australian Labor Party PM Kevin Rudd (a fairly Blairite figure who sought to make friends with the Murdoch press just as Blair did in 1996) to force a legal inquiry into Murdoch's press monopoly (70% of Aussie newspaper circulation!) down under. The source is of course biased, as most press reports are, being from the centre-left Guardian.

. “Any Labor leader is mindful of the fact that the Murdochs will be out to take you down. Your job as leader is to try and maximise something approaching balanced coverage. That’s a really difficult thing to do … to work to ensure that our narrative is covered rather than simply ridiculed as a matter of ideological politics.” 

 Guardian, Oct 2020.