Biased BBC contributor Alan notes….
“The BBC in conjunction with another media group and the British Labour Party are conducting a secret campaign to silence if not destroy a rival to their political views and commercial interests……
I might suggest such actions are probably illegal, certainly go against the spirit of the BBC Charter and in silencing any voices they don’t like they destroy democracy and in effect set up a one party state…regardless of who is in power the only voices of influence will be the BBC’s and its fellow travellers.
The BBC’s Panorama programme dug up a 10 year old story and have presented it as ‘proven fact’ when they have as yet shown not a shred of evidence to back up their central claim……Murdoch is plotting his revenge….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17547568
‘Rupert Murdoch plans to “hit back hard” following allegations that one of his companies used hacking and piracy to sabotage rival TV competitors.
A BBC Panorama documentary accused NDS – a News Corp subsidiary – of leaking information which allowed ITV Digital’s services to be accessed for free.
“Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels,” Murdoch wrote on Twitter.
Chase Carey, News Corp’s chief operating officer, issued a statement condemning “the BBC’s inaccurate claims….The BBC’s Panorama programme was a gross misrepresentation of NDS’s role as a high quality and leading provider of technology and services to the pay-TV industry.”.
“Panorama presented manipulated and mischaracterised emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations.’
“Wow what an integrate twisted tale of events!”
Remarkably the investigative powers of the police, the prosecution service’s authority and the judicial system have been co-opted by the BBC for a trial by television.
The BBC have launched yet another attack on their commercial and political nemesis, News Corp, claiming in a Panorama programme, ‘Murdoch’s TV Pirates’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dlvbm/Panorama_Murdochs_TV_Pirates/)
that his company was behind the commercial destruction of ITV’s ‘OnDigital’ service.
The allegation was based solely on the word of a computer hacker with nothing substantial to corroborate his words.
Panorama claims this is ‘the biggest Murdoch hacking scandal of all…’piracy was the killer blow for the business…there is no question’…..a secret operation inside a Murdoch company hacked down the competition.’
and yet there is no proof…let alone a legal ‘trial’.
Panorama claimed to have emails that were a smoking gun but the ones shown certainly revealed no evidence that Murdoch’s company had authorised the piracy and release of the code for OnDigital’s subscription card….the emails in fact are so innocuous (so far) that Labour’s Tom Watson has put out a Twitter appeal for help reading them:
RT @tom_watson: Australian Financial Review needs help with crowdsourcing a review of some interesting emails! afr.com/p/download_the_ema…
http://www.afr.com/p/download_the_emails_4otBluEZ7OMKeUWkk0FdFL
Good to see Tom Watson and the BBC working hand in hand again.
These emails were ‘obtained’ by the Australian ‘Financial Review’….
‘The Financial Review has published thousands of emails from an archive of 14,400 emails held by former Metropolitan Police commander Ray Adams who was European chief for Operational Security from 1996 to 2002.’
‘The emails, which come from several different folders within that drive – thus there is some duplication – were passed to The Australian Financial Review by an anonymous source. The Financial Review has undertaken its own inquiries to verify the emails.’
You may want to ask why all this has come to light now…this suggestion that Murdoch’s company was involved in ‘piracy’ was made in 1999 and went to court in 2002…so strange timing…suddenly a ‘key witness’ appears after 10 years silence and a load of emails also appear simultaneously.
Panorama claimed that a court case brought by Canal Plus regarding card hacking failed because Murdoch bought out the complainant company….but the emails actually disprove that….as News Corp were after the company long before:
‘Date: 2/2/2000 10:27:20 PM Subject: FW: Industrial Espionage Article
Enclosed is a scanned article sent by Arieh Moller – taken from the Sunday Times about a case of Industrial Espionage conducted against the British Aerospace company by the French Secret Service. ?
Bearing in mind News Corp.’s attempt to join forces with Canal+ which failed
because the French didn’t want ‘foreigners’ controlling Canal+… – and in light of the recent industrial espionage case we’ve had in China -? this can be an interesting example of nationally endorsed industrial espionage – to show relevant NDS personnel… ‘
also this from the Guardian in 2002:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/mar/13/media.citynews
‘For its part, NDS says the whole piracy claim is an outlandish fabrication. A statement from Abe Peled, the company’s president and chief executive, last night said the counterfeiters had simply targeted an inferior technology and succeeded without any help from anyone.
He suggested that Canal Plus is in commercial trouble and revealed that the French firm had approached NDS before Christmas suggesting a merger, adding that the French had been trying to poach the NDS employee accused of leaking Canal Plus’s code.’
Panorama also hides some other interesting titbits:
OnDigital was launched when David Cameron, now UK prime minister, was head of communications at Carlton Communications, the ITV franchise owner….the same man who launched the anti-Murdoch Leveson Inquiry (and now has been hit by the Murdoch Times for ‘cash for access’…ha ha)
It also merely called one Steve Hewlett a ‘media analyst’…but he is presenter of Radio 4’s Media Show and former director of programmes at Carlton Television.
He appeared this morning on the ‘Today’ programme where he stated that (vhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console) 1 hr 52 mins:
Piracy was an issue (in the downfall of OnDigital) but it is fair to say that there were other issues….it is very expensive to launch a digital service, there are high costs and high risks and ITV did not have the appetite for that risk….or the money. ITV also did not have any premium content that viewers wanted to watch (bit of a problem) and finally the shareholders could never decide on anything….he stated ITV Digital probably wouldn’t have worked whatever Murdoch did.
Panorama also failed to mention one of its star witnesses, computer hacker Oliver Kommerling, had been hired by Murdoch’s NDS, but was later employed by the rival Canal Plus who were complaining of piracy.
Panorama also fails to mention that a computer hacker and ‘witness’ named Jan Saggiori was a consultant to News Corp’s competitors, the French media group Canal Plus.
Panorama also claimed that it was impossible for anyone but a powerful organisation with unlimited funding to hack these cards….but this is not true…NDS was set up to catch people hacking such cards….indeed the ITV OnDigital card/Canal Plus card was revealed to the world by Canadian ‘pirates’ who offered $1 million dollars to anyone who could hack another card….’In April 1997, the Canadian pirate dealers were offering up to $1million for a top-flight hacker to crack the DirecTV NDS card.’
These same Canadian hackers smuggled two Bulgarian hackers, Plamen Donev and Vesselin Nedeltchev (known as Vesco) into Canada under false papers, then into the US, where they had hired the University of Montana physics lab to crack the P2 card (a Murdoch card).
So Panorama’s programme rests on very dodgy ‘facts’ and the evidence of a man who we don’t know whom he works for now, nor do we know his motives for making these claims.
The whole programme was clearly constructed to try and tie this into the phone hacking scandal, and seemed more intent on proving this meant Murdoch was not a ‘fit and proper’ person to hold a broadcasting license.
The Today programme summed up the attitude with Sarah Montague getting to the point she had been desperately working towards….’What damage do these allegations do to News Corporation?’
Steve Hewlett obliged with the reply that this indicates a ‘Broader cultural issue within News Corporation.’
i.e… they are not ‘fit and proper’.
As in another failed case against Murdoch the impression is what counts….’In the event, the allegations never stuck. But the mud did.’
This of course would be a massive coup for the BBC and the Left. The BBC would love to
The greatest threat to commercial tv channels ISNT Murdock BUT the BBC.
These guys operate in a competitor free environment with a budget that can only be dreamt of by their competitors and then the BBC has the balls to pontificate to us about the evil Murdock?
There is no way in hell that the BBC should be airing its musical programme (what ever its called) at the same time as ITV’s Britiains got talent (or what ever its called) simply because the BBC DOES NOT NEED THE MONEY GENERATED FROM SUCH PROGRAMMES TO OPERATE! Yet we see this time and time again, the BBC airing their shows at the same time as the commercial channels shows, thus drawing crowds away from businesses that actually have operate in a hostile, commercial environment.
Tell you what, if News Corp had balls they would be making a documentary on the destructive effects the BBC has had on British culture over the last 50 years.
But you are right Dave, the BBC is doing all it can to ensure it stays the dominant voice on the airwaves in the UK. Sadly, we have a spineless, pathetic Government that is continuing to allow this to happen…and even though there is the opportunity to usher in a new era with a new, right leaning Director but instead we are just going to get another BBC hack taking over.
Regards
Mailman
Good points, not sure if it’s DV or Alan though.
The BBC mantra seems to be ‘guilty until proven assimilated’.
And once in the hive, any excuse will do no matter how bang to rights.
Do I hear context? Or ‘sources say’?
Unique.
Of course what also excited the BBC is that NDS is an Israeli company .
Great post! Great details. Surely one to try to get posted elsewhere and into the greater blogosphere?…Guido or someone similar perhaps?
B-BBC readers may wonder “Why Murdoch?” Why the tribal hatred by the BBC of THIS man and THIS company? Rupert Murdoch and News Corp are the manifestations of the deep unease of the BBC ruling class in their decline. Their simplistic view is that once the bogey-man has been routed the status quo will be preserved.
The BBC’s antagonism toward all things Murdoch can be traced back to the ‘70s when the media market opened up. Over the course of 15 years, Capital Radio kicked Radio 1’s butt, Classic FM showed there was an audience for “serious” music that did not included the plinkity-plonk modern stuff R3 was feeding us, television drama was in the grips of superior ITV film series, BBC Sport at last had a competitor in Sky Sports and they lost football and Test cricket – the Beeb needed a bogey-man upon whom to focus their corporate frustration. All their fears – Murdoch and non-Murdoch – became concentrated in him.
By the “Beeb” I don’t mean simply the “management” – though it was their view from Director-General down that Murdoch was a “flash in the pan, old boy”. Sooner or later, it was argued, the great British public, the “educated” ones at least, would see the error of their ways and return to Auntie’s warm embrace of warm milk and the shipping forecast.
But every producer, presenter and department head found they were out-gunned by commercial opposition with audiences drifting away from the corporation that once had the reigns of media power in its mighty monopolistic hands. A visceral dislike of Murdoch permeated every level of the organization even as every prediction about Sky and ILR was proved wrong. On many occasions even the supreme God of the BBC – NEWS – was beaten to a story. Murdoch hatred entered the bloodstream of the BBC. Now, as David points out in “Black Arts”, it is seeking its revenge.
But the days of the unchallenged power of BBC network gatekeepers and dictatorial programme editors are gone forever. Why, even the once unquestioned “Panorama” can be dissected by someone called “David Vance” on an internet WEBSITE? Good God man, pass the brandy?!?!
I love it.
I don’t like Murdoch, but I like the BBC even less.
You know, it’s weird, but until a couple of journalists from Murdoch’s press in Australia really took on prime minister gillard and her communist dealings going back decades there was no “problem”. The UK scandal was just that- restricted to the other side of the world.
No sooner than two of the last surviving journalists who actually do any non-PR work and actually do their job expose her for what she is, and down came the hammer in Australian on Murdoch too.
It’s almost like the lapdog media gets its orders from the PM or something.
Panorama also claimed that it was impossible for anyone but a powerful organisation with unlimited funding to hack these cards
Yes, they did claim that, but earlier on in the documentary they showed a photo of Kommerling hacking cards in the garage attached to his house! A touch inconsistent, if you ask me.
It looks like that this publication is even less precise than what they claim about Panorama…
I wasn’t on Panorama ! So if all the article is so precise as this big mistake, I would not trust a word of it.
Jan