‘Reed’ in the ‘Open Thread’ brings to our attention the welcome news that the BBC is to be included in formal reviews of media ownership by OFCOM:
The BBC has an internet news audience of 57% of the total number of people who go online for news in the UK.
The regulator said it did not want to formally limit ownership, but if there were concerns that an individual or company had amassed too great a market share of newspapers, television and online, then Parliament could set further guidelines.
It said: ‘Ofcom does not believe a prohibition on market share is currently advisable. Instead, in the interests of flexibility, plurality concerns brought about by high-market share should be addressed through a periodic plurality review.’
Ofcom added that the BBC needed to be included in future reviews and highlighted that the corporation’s news content was consumed by 81 per cent of Britons each week.
Research compiled for Ofcom found that Britons use at least two different media to get information, with television cited as the most important source. Some 30 per cent of adults access their daily news from newspapers, 29 per cent from the internet, while 41 per cent cite radio and 88 per cent from television.
BBC1 and Radio 4 were named the most used news services in broadcasting, while BBC News Online, Facebook and Google were voted the most used news sources on the internet.
All these viewing/listening figures are well known and demonstrate the significant dominance of the BBC as a news provider which makes it all the more surprising that the BBC was not considered in the remit of the Leveson Inquiry.
It does look more and more likely that Leveson was nothing more than a kangaroo court that was manouveured into lynching Murdoch….to the benefit of the BBC both commercially and from a political ideological standpoint.
Consider this from ’38 Degrees’, ‘friends’ of the BBC, who seem to have a powerful and influential campaigning ability…note that whilst they notionally applaud ‘plurality‘ in the media that doesn‘t extend to allowing ‘rightwing‘ broadcasters onto the airwaves or into print:
38 Degrees members have been defending the BBC ever since James Murdoch’s attack on it in August 2009. The reports that the government was pushing the BBC to accept “a license fee raid” triggered adiscussion about what we should do on our facebook page, and thousands of 38 Degrees members quickly contacted their MPs speaking out against these deep cuts being forced through behind closed doors.
Many members believed that this decision to raid the BBC was influenced by Rupert Murdoch.
We will also need to keep up the pressure on Vince Cable to call a review of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to seize full control of BSkyB.
Rupert Murdoch has his sights set on gaining complete control of BSkyB* and increasing his stranglehold on a free and independent media in the UK. He currently owns 40% of the company but wants to increase his stake to 100%.
This would be a disaster. It would give Murdoch even more political influence and it could open the door to biased, right-wing news like Fox News in the US.
A free and diverse media is a huge part of what makes democracy work.
Can’t have those troublesome rightwingers passing off their unwholesome ideas and views to the vulnerable British Public…..that’s the job of the BBC!
Tangential, but didn’t that imbecile Miliband suggest that there should be a limit on print media market share?
How is that remotely possible, other than by limiting the number of of copies of each newspaper printed each day?
The reason that News Corp has such a sizeable market share is because people buy their bloody papers. By choice. The very concept of which is, of course, antithetical to market-busting BBC.
Yes but I did note that OFCOM said it ‘does not believe a prohibition on market share is currently advisable.’
Presumably OFCOM recognises Murdoch &Co are not as all powerful as some parties with vested interests like to suggest.
Yes Alan, but the word in there that causes me worry is ‘currently’.
In market terms the warning is to not be too successful, or else.
True
…and these loons at 38 degrees see no contradiction in calling for one broadcaster that is funded by the choice of it’s customers to be limited in size whilst campaigning for another that is funded by compulsion to have it’s dominance maintained.
“A free and diverse media is a huge part of what makes democracy work.” – so let’s keep the BBC as the dominant force in broadcasting to squeeze out the competition in the name of plurality.
Muppets.
Absolutely, Reed.
But as we know and with so many things, ‘diversity’ is a very malleable concept.
But that’s just it, they’re not muppets (in the sense of being stupid) – they know exactly what they’re doing: ‘This would be a disaster. It would give Murdoch even more political influence and it could open the door to biased, right-wing news like Fox News in the US’.
The Left are fascists at heart – they want to suppress any opinions or arguments which contradict or undermine their world view and political objectives.
Inside every left-liberal is a rabidly intolerant secret policeman. See it in their eyes when somebody has the audacity to cross them. Paxman’s boat race when confronted with an eminently reasonable Tommy Robinson was a master class in ‘How can people like this exist?’. Channel 4’s Jon Snow is another beauty whenever the sacred leftoid texts are questioned. Their eyes suddenly go ‘Gulag Calling’. Just a bit of a giveaway, really. Like spoilt, frustrated children, too used to one-way traffic.
“Like spoilt, frustrated children, too used to one-way traffic. ”
This is SO true. It’s why they always immediately switch to appealing to emotion whenever confronted with a rock-solid argument from the likes of Douglas Murray. They simply can’t sustain their half-baked fantasies when confronted with the real world.
The only legitimate “diversity” is one based on free choice, not “go to gaol if you dont pay” The BBC has no defense. It exists on North Korean economics.
Tonight BBC London jumps to another Labour attack, this time on Boris Johnson apparently “dropping into a Murdoch lunch”. Labour “outrage”. On cue, when Labour says “Jump!” the only question from the BBC is “How high?”
…there’s certainly no need to ask “in what direction”.
Wake me up when there’s some intellectual diversity at the BBC. NB defenders of the indefensible: This means more than Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson and Tim Willcox to balance out the other several thousand Left-wing Beeboids.
David, you’ll have to change your name to rip van winkle.
Well, I live only 20 minutes away from Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow)…..
..better make it Van Tassel then.
Why all the excitement? The key word here is “ownership”. Miliband, quoted by Reuters, said that “I don’t believe that one person should continue to control 37 percent … of the newspaper market,” [my bold]. Accordingly Miliband lets the BBC off the hook as does OFCOM before its inquiry even begins. The BBC isn’t technically “owned” by anyone in the sense that NI is and even has its own OFCOM-lite, the BBC Trust, whose motto is “the BBC gets it about right – every time – all the time“. In this prospective quasi-judicial stitch-up of the privately owned press the BBC will be amicus curiae to “guide” OFCOM by pointing out the sins of its competitors.
‘dominance of the BBC as a news provider which makes it all the more surprising that the BBC was not considered in the remit of the Leveson Inquiry’
Surprising… to a near unique level.
Still, as with this Cameron/Carr ‘what have they unleashed?’ faux licence to probe tax affairs, Leveson has at long last maybe opened a crack on the Pandora’s Box that is the BBC’s media monopoly.
That all said, if OFCOM is the one in charge, I can’t help but notice the resume of their current boss… and where he is tipped for heading.
Re ‘Friends’ of the BBC.
The BBC has always had a well organized group in the directorate who put the corporation’s point of view and influence government’s action towards it. This “black propaganda” campaign includes wining and dining opinion makers, giving them tours of facilities and a carrying out a campaign of positive news about the Beeb. It’s quite subtle. For example in the 1980s Blue Peter’s Biddy Baxter entertained MPs and business leaders. As most of were of an age to have been brought up on Blue Peter, it was considered a coup when the most popular destination of VIPs was to see the Blue Peter Garden. (As the Jesuits say, ‘Give us a child when he’s six and we’ll keep him for life”)
You won’t be surprised to learn that the number one priority was convincing them to keep the licence fee
This is consistent with the fact that the money to keep the BBC going comes via the political class or, more to the point, its representatives in Westminster. As far as the BBC is concerned the general public in general and the licence fee payer in particular can be treated with complete contempt as long as the gravy train can be kept on the rails . . . and the people who keep it on the rails are the politicians, not the public.
The good thing about News International – and the rest of the privately owned press – is that it has to produce something which its consumers want and like otherwise it’ll go bust. The BBC can afford to put two fingers up to the public – and does – since this will have little effect on its income as long as Hunt etc are kept sweet. Interestingly the Guardian does provide what its consumers want but, as it turns out and unsurprisingly, those consumers are a very small part of the total market for papers.
Accordingly, since the unofficial subsidy paid to the Guardian by the BBC and the government (ie public sector appointments and media employment advertising) was reduced to a trickle in May 2010, the Guardian relies on AutoTrader, the odd tax dodge and the Soros-lite Sir Ronald Cohen’s APAX to keep its head above water: even the BBC in print can’t actually support itself.