News International versus BBC

So Prime Minister Cameron has questioned the size of George Entwistle's payoff from the BBC at the same time as claiming that the government would have a "hands-off approach" to the BBC, which must resolve its own difficulties. A year's salary for being encouraged to resign from an organisation that he had worked for 26 years and a job he had held for 8 weeks is maybe generous but no more than sacking him would have cost. He has also lost his career and reputation all for displaying integrity and openness that was naive in the cynical world of the media.

Meanwhile, over at News International just three weeks ago, the Telegraph announced that Rebekah Brookes had received a £7m payoff after showing little integrity and no transparency during her 10 years as editor of the Sun and the News of the World and then as Chief Executive of News International. Currently awaiting trial for her role in the phone-hacking debacle, she was also responsible for commissioning and publishing stories that have damaged hundreds of lives. Did the Prime Minister pass any comment? It may be that integrity and transparency are debased values in Murdoch's world. It may also be that private sector payoffs running at more than 15 times the rate for public broadcasters are what the posh boys consider reasonable. It is after all pretty well the ratio of top salaries in the private sector compared to the public sector in the UK.

We instinctively trust the BBC because it acknowledges its mistakes and has been its own fiercest critic in the last month. But most of all it produces programmes on radio and TV as well as films and documentaries that are cherished for their quality and objectivity. It has a real-time website that is the first point of call for many of us during the day as we seek to keep abreast of world, national or local news. Yes, it is a loosely integrated operation with a lot of responsibility devolved to programme-makers who are expected to operate to the highest ethical standards. (Is this not the model extolled for the successful digital age company?) When they get it wrong, as they do from time to time, they are ruthless in reporting the criticism made of the BBC, even if at the same time they defend themselves as they did with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant which was celebrity-driven drivel in the rain.

All the BBC services together: radio, TV, film and media cost no more than £12 a month, an absolute snip compared to News Corporation's part-owned Sky packages that are three times as high at typically £37 -£41 a month with no radio, media or educational content, let alone a world service. Sky is also largely dependent on off-the-shelf programmes bought from more creative broadcasters like the BBC.

So why is George Entwistle trounced whilst Rebekah Brookes gets texted lol from the PM whilst taking a payoff fifteen times as much? News International has seized the opportunity to trash the BBC as have the government.  Is it just because the BBC is more progressive, ethical, transparent and egalitarian in its outlook? Or is it because News International and the government are fundamentally opaque, patronising, regressive, elitist and tolerate inequality as well as promoting it in its many guises?

Don't remember, damned don't remember and statistics

  

• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
   
  
  
• 
  
  

 

On the day that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brookes were charged by the Crown Prosecution Service about the phone-hacking of 600 alleged victims during their time as editors of the News of the World, the BBC released an analysis of which witnesses in the Leveson Inquiry used the term "I don't remember" the most during their evidence to the Inquiry. "I don't remember" appears to have become the term of deemed integrity for our captains of industry from Rupert Murdoch to Bob Diamond in this era of self-diagnosed senility.

What emerges is fascinating: Rebekah Brookes and Andy Coulson are in stellar company in the "I don't remember" league along with James and Rupert Murdoch and that chap, I can't recall his name, but I think he may be prime minister.

The number of times witnesses at the Leveson Inquiry who said: "I don't remember," "I don't recall," "I can't remember" or "I can't recall" and the number of words they spoke is shown below in blue and in descending order.

1. David Cameron   49 of 25,890 words spoken

2. James Murdoch   41 of 23,162 words spoken

3. Rebekah Brooks  35 of 20,544 words spoken

4. Rupert Murdoch 30 of 19,362 words spoken

5. Andy Coulson      28  of 10,531 words spoken

Rebekah Brooks immediately refuted the phone-hacking charges saying: "I am not guilty of these charges. I did not authorise, nor was I aware of, phone hacking under my editorship." Mmm, there again she may simply not recall what she had authorised. She and Andy Coulson both played the 'At the News of the World we worked on behalf of the victims of crime' card without any remorse for the 600 victims who were subject to the 'crime' of invasion of privacy and press harassment.

The BBC analysis is an undoubted slur on News International, its leaders and friends. Even the seventh and eighth highest "I don't recall" claims came from the Minister for Culture who is responsible for making the decision on the News International acquiring BSkyB and the Godfather of one of Murdoch's children. Yes, Jeremy Hunt and Tony Blair with 23 and 19 "I don't remember" claims respectively. There were 474 witnesses at Leveson so this is excellent bunching by Team Sky wannabees. Despite or more likely because of the collective amnesia of these magnificent seven domestiques of News International, the spoils of their loyalty will not include the takeover of BSkyB to add to their monopoly of the press.

Continue reading the main storyy

• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  

Vilification- the new Deadly Sin

Vilified or Vilifiers who's the odd one out

The undercurrent of news has been far from positive this year from tsunamis in Japan to the killings in Syria and other parts of the Arab world.  It is maybe no great surprise that the recovery from the recession in Western economies has stalled or that Europe has failed to find a solution for its most vulnerable economies.  However, on both counts the media and our politicians have taken to vilifying the personalities involved.

Silvio Berlusconi was never going to be a statesman and it is a sad reflection on the Italian electorate that they believed the stories in the Italian press and media, much of which he owns, that he was the ageless gigolo who could hold together the creative and corrupt practices that co-exist in this self-obsessed but beautiful country.  His indiscretions were seen as the sort of excesses we expect from teenagers or politicians. President Sarkozy has been built up, like his shoes, as the Napoleonic gallic charmer - not afraid to change partners or policies whilst Angela Merkel has been castigated as the indecisive status quo defender of Germanic austerity.  It is not just the cartoonists and sketch writers that are hacking away at their reputations but the PM and Chancellor are targeting the main players in the eurozone crisis as another butt to kick as an excuse for their own lamentable management of the British economy which, even Cameron now accepts, is in deep trouble.  And they are of course joined in this affray by the infantry of the tabloid press.

I have watched some of the interviews in the Levenson inquiry this week and been reminded about the full scale and horrors of the way the press, and that includes not only News International but also the Mail, Mirror and Express groups, have transgressed the bounds of privacy by hacking into phones, emails, wheelie bins of their victims and their friends to feed their frenzy for scandal which dominates much of their output. Whether famous actors or ordinary families, the victims have divulged the brutality that they have suffered through the press.  It is becoming 'de rigueur' for our politicians, after years of kowtowing to the media, to now blame them for this sorry state of affairs.  

It is not surprising that James Murdoch is hastily retreating from his involvement in the editorial boards of the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times: he will be spending more time as the bad apple of the family in New York.  The moguls such as Berlusconi and the Murdochs released a form of voyeuristic journalism which has been toxic to democracy. At the same time, they chivvied up to the political elite to secure compliance with the moguls' wider agenda to open up business opportunities and allow takeovers that would extend their influence. They devised new tools to undermine anyone of influence who opposed their expansionist ambitions by tarnishing reputations and creating images that would not appeal to the electorate. 

British politicians of all persuasions were happy to skip along with this game, they were afraid of their own images being damaged in the way that David Steel suffered at the hands of Spitting Image in the 1980s.  So Murdoch and his ilk levered their way into the inner sanctums of political decision making and by employing some very ruthless journalists to vilify and undermine personalities and associated ideas they were able to shape policy agendas on tax, Europe, immigration and defence. They scripted the 'private good, public bad' refrain that was embraced by New Labour as well as the coalition government.  They used celebrity culture to create a sense that avarice and wealth were worthy objectives.  They were assisted by luxury goods advertisers who saw new niche markets opening up amongst the new rich list. 

News International seemed to have an agenda loosely based on encouraging its readers to embrace the deadly sins. Most reports or articles could be categorised under envy, lust, gluttony and greed and national pride seems to drive the eurosceptic agenda.  Vilification of character was also added to the modus operandi and sadly it seems to have been embraced by the political classes. This year at last there has been nemesis for the great panjandrums of the media and their henchmen.  Our politicians, as apprentice panjandrums, are not altogether immune from this.

It would be good to return to the days when humour was used to make political points such as when Denis Healey described being attacked by Sir Geoffrey Howe 'like being savaged by a dead sheep' or when Vince Cable noticed Gordon Brown's 'remarkable transformation in the past few weeks -  from Stalin to Mr Bean.'  Alas, there are no signs that the coalition has the wit or the wisdom to use humour instead of vilification.

Empire of the Sun sets

Agreed

After a remarkable two weeks of reading and watching the unravelling of lies, deceptions, and audacity of power exercised by Murdoch's News Corporation; nemesis was delivered yesterday.  The emperor and his scion, James, were cross-examined at length by a Parliamentary Select Committee. It was a slow process with Rupert looking and banging the table like an inmate from a Southern Cross care home and James indulging in obsequious obfuscation as he flaunted his vastly inflated ego. Wendi Deng, Murdoch's current wife, was the symbolic personification of the future - Chinese, alert, caring and in control. She was the only winner as the Empire of the Sun began to set.

The politicians of Britain had finally realised that the bad dream was over and they could put News International into the dock without fear of retribution.  If only Thatcher, Blair and Brown had realised this over the past thirty years we would be living in a far more egalitarian and peaceful country.   At least Thatcher agreed with much of the News International diatribe, there is no such excuse for Blair and Brown who seemed to be in fear and awe of Murdoch's influence and entitlement.

News International and Bottled Water

Recent reports of the dumbing down of the UK have highlighted how there are no jobs for young people, schools will no longer be built, pensions will be eroded, some hospitals will disappear and all budgets will be sized down and quartered. It assumes that all the basic services we consume from the state are expendable but that products heaped on us by private enterprises or badly procured by government departments are immutable. Is that the case? Do we really need designer labels, tasers, weapons of mass destruction, News International or even bottled water? Could we not sacrifice some or all of these instead of the public services that nurture a better society?


If any of these disappeared would our quality of life diminish? I doubt it. We would have more income to spend on real needs. It would also help eradicate the culture of deception and economy with the truth that underpins these products and services. Unless St Michael's, inov8 or Salomon are deemed designer labels, I have never had any truck with any of these expendable products and seem to be none the worse for it. I did read the Sunday Times before Rupert got his paws on it but never since nor any of the rest of his stable of corrupt journalism, I have stubbornly refused Sky, never buy bottled water, and I fail to understand how Trident and Tasers make me safer.


As I left the supermarket the other day I watched a woman wheel out a trolley full of bottled water from the supermarket and heave it into her 4x4. Why? Any study of water quality would confirm that tap water is a superior product, particularly in Scotland where tap water was invented and where even water from streams and sources in the mountains has done me no harm for the last 25 years. People seem to purchase many optional and expensive goods and services through unjustified fear, peer pressure and obsession with status and image. Is Sky Television not primarily a regressive tax that transfers money from the ordinary citizen to the freeloaders in Sport and Entertainment and the News International Executives? Why pay 200- 300 times as much per litre for bottled water than the ubiquitous real thing? Would I feel any better by wearing Armani boxer shorts or a Rolex watch? Yet we squander huge amounts of money on these things and feed the frenzy of celebrity endorsements and unsustainable marketing budgets for products that are admittedly sometimes very good but essentially marketing froth.


So what could we do about it?  It is asking too much for the coalition to come to its senses on Tasers and Trident, governments are always afraid of taking on organisations that enhance their machismo with dubious weapons. But News International and bottled water are consumer-dependent products and services. Could they be the first targets in a people's ethical and economic campaign? Egalitarian consumer values would target the add-ons to living not the basic services as part of the belt-tightening that is needed as we strive to live within our means. Who knows it might even influence our slash-and-burn politicians when they realise that they are damaging far too many people's lives and aspirations with their often tactless austerity measures and their infatuation with keeping in with the media.