by Anthony Painter
It would be lovely to think that the BSkyB bid has been dropped because of Parliamentary unity and clarity of voice. Unfortunately, this is not really the case. The reality is that two other factors are likely to have led to this decision.
The increasing political and media attention on the scandal in the US and the impact of this focus on News Corporation’s financial standing is undoubtedly a major factor. Questions posed yesterday by Senator Jay Rockefeller who has insisted that allegations that victims of 9/11 had their phones hacked should be investigated have forced the Murdochs into a rear-guard action. BSkyB is no longer the focus- News Corporation itself is the concern and the corporate share buy-back yesterday indicates the emerging crisis for the company.
The second issue is the ticking time-bomb of the Ofcom ‘fit and proper’ test. If they fail that, then not only would the bid have been stopped in its tracks, if may have had to divest itself of its existing highly lucrative 39% shareholding.
There is an important caveat to this. Rupert Murdoch is nothing if not tenacious. His thinking will be that this is the end of the battle but not the war: stabilise the situation in the US and come back later. So be it. However, next time the rules of the game must be different. This is not about one individual or a family or a single company. It is about understanding how we’ve been shown the consequences of allowing large concentrations of power to swell- corruption. Now we must say: never again.
It would be astounding in reality if News Corporation was able to launch another bid in the foreseeable future whatever Rupert Murdoch may be hoping. Nonetheless, if it does it should be on different terms. The Communications Act 2003 is now looking like a highly flawed piece of legislation: most particularly, its public interest test is too narrow. It is not good enough to wait for the public inquiry to report- we need to draft some amendments to our media ownership laws immediately. The following would seem to be sensible:
– Ofcom should be asked by the secretary of state to continue with its ‘fit and proper’ assessment of News Corporation executives with the evolving criminal investigations taken into consideration.
– ‘Fit and proper’ itself must be reviewed to ensure that it encompasses executives presiding over the types of malign and illegal behaviour we have seen within News International over the past few years.
– Cross-media ownership should be more heavily restrained. 20% ownership is the current limit. It should be reviewed with a view to lowering it and it must be revisited should a media company exceed the new limit even after a takeover has occurred.
– Content provision and carriage should be separated. In other words, no company should be both a content provider and media infrastructure service provider.
– The BSkyB plan could ultimately evolve its digital television into a walled and bounded internet platform- this is anti-competitive and should not be allowed. If a company provides access to any of the internet, it should be obliged to provide access to all of it on an equal footing (ie same ease of access and download speeds etc.)
These changes will ensure that corporate media power will be heavily constrained. It will not hamper free, fair and determined journalism which is a public good. It will create an open, diverse, and dynamic information market.
We can’t drag our feet in diluting concentrations of media power. We now have the opportunity to act with clear heads.
News International is the power lever; BSkyB is the cash machine. At least the bid has been stopped in its tracks. We are at the end of the beginning of this scandal. Now we can push for an open, competitive, plural, transparent, and dynamic media and an enriched public and commercial space. Time to get on with it before it’s too late again.
Anthony Painter is an author and critic.
