British DUers, has Rupert Murdoch damaged your media

[Skidmore]

the way he has ours? Has your media actively tried to become like Murdoch's stations?

[Skidmore]

1. Kick

cause I want to know how malignant this sucker truly is or if he just is profit driven. He's done so much damage here.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Murdoch practised on Australian, then British newspapers

before moving on to American television.

Murdoch's main political influence in Britain is through The Sun newspaper. This is a tabloid, the biggest selling newspaper in Britain. I'm going to try not to sound like an elitist snob in this, but I may not pull it off: The Sun is downmarket, for people who aren't that interested in important news, especially international news, but it does print some. Its readership is seen as likely swing voters - largely working class, very 'patriotic', quite traditional (not in all respects - The Sun still runs its topless page 3 girl, for instance), they can be persuaded that either of the main parties are 'out of touch' with the common man (and they'll probably never like the Liberal Democrats). So The Sun is thought to have a lot of political clout - when it sides with one party or another. Realistically, it also seems to be that Murdoch directs it to support whichever looks likely to win the next election, to reinforce the idea that "It's the Sun wot won it", as it printed the day after John Major was narrowly elected in 1992. They turned to Blair by 1997, and have supported him since (somewhat grudgingly in the last election).

The Sun does seem to get many of the government leaks to run as 'exclusives', so its connection with the government is still there. It's thought that it was Murdoch who forced, via the influence of The Sun, to say he would have a referendum on the European Constitution. The Sun was against the constitution, and thought a referendum would defeat it. Possibly Murdoch thought it would hurt his corporations; possibly it was a genuine political wish of his.

I think Murdoch is very much driven by profit. This gives him a natural right wing stance, since he needs an environment in which he can make large profits, and have them taxed at a low rate. But he isn't slavish in forcing an ideological stance on his newspapers - he also owns the Sunday Times, which printed the Downing Street Memos, for instance, because a scoop is still a scoop. He has pushed for, and largely got, a relaxation of TV ownership rules in the UK by Blair, which would appear to mean he'd be allowed to bid for the ownership of the 5th terrestrial broadcast channel, but so far he hasn't tried to.

Another example is republicanism (as opposed to monarchism). Murdoch is understood to personally support this, but has never tried to force the attitude on his papers - it wouldn't work, since the vast majority of Sun and Times readers are very pro-monarch. In the UK, it's the centre-left papers, like The Guradian and Independent, that lean towards republicanism.

He does own the sole British-based satellite broadcaster, Sky. There are still rules on balance of news programming in the UK, and Sky News is nothing like Fox News - it's basically unbiased in its news reporting, though, unlike the BBC or Channel 4, it doesn't really attempt 'current affairs' programmes that might run exposes. The main effect of Sky has been to buy up a lot of sports coverage, now only available through subscription. This has injected more money into the sports, but restricted it to those willing to pay Murdoch a regular amount.