Why Murdochs are wrong to blame BBC for media’s woes

Roy Greenslade
02.09.09

The final sentence of James Murdoch's speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival was hugely significant: “The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.” It was an appropriate conclusion to an agenda-setting tirade aimed at Britain's public service broadcaster.

But the central point of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture was, of course, to complain that the BBC should no longer be properly described as a broadcaster. It is a multi-platform provider of information and entertainment and, in his view, should be forced to climb off some of those platforms in double-quick time.

Before I take issue with him, let's admit that there was a lot of good sense in the speech last weekend. He showed that he understands the complexity of the fast-moving digital landscape and, most particularly, the increasing convergence between what were once separate forms of communication.

It is also fair to say that, despite the obvious self-interest involved in his undermining the BBC, there is merit in the continuing debate about its funding, its range of services and the resources spent on its websites.

I also found myself applauding his questioning of claims about broadcast news impartiality. “It should hardly be necessary to point out that the mere selection of stories and their place in the running order is itself a process full of unacknowledged partiality,” he said. Who can argue with that?

Similarly, he made out a good case for less broadcasting regulation. I rather liked his joke about creating an Ofpress to match Ofcom.

That said, Murdoch was also guilty of many contradictions, not least his attack on media monopoly while seeking to maintain the monopoly enjoyed by one of his own company's divisions, namely BSkyB.

He railed against the European Commission's requirement that broadcasting rights to Premier League football should be divided up in order to prevent Sky from acquiring them all.

This attempt to create a competitive climate — and thereby reduce prices — defied common sense, he asserted, because customers needed to pay two sets of subscriptions. As we know, this didn't happen. An insufficient number of football fans paid up to view games on the channels of Sky's Irish-based rival, Setanta.

But that takes no account of the fact that there was no level playing field prior to the bidding process. BSkyB had already created such a dominant pay TV position, offering millions of viewers access to so many channels, that a rival offering a mere soupçon could not hope to provide genuine competition. Then there was the way the matches were sold in packages, which tended to favour the ascendant BSkyB, though I concede that what counted was the size of the bids. Setanta, in truth, was never in with a hope of offering a real challenge to Sky's dominance. It couldn't pay enough and, having stretched to do so, it couldn't hope to secure enough revenue from its lesser package.

Yet Murdoch, echoing his father, Rupert, 20 years ago in his own MacTaggart, wants us to see things in reverse when it comes to his own conflict with the BBC. In that instance, he wishes us to view BSkyB as the Setanta-like underdog, despite News Corporation being one of the world's largest media conglomerates.

His assault on the BBC's development into a multi-platform media organisation was altogether harder to accept, especially when seen in the context of his own understanding that we are moving into an era of convergence.

In complaining about the way in which the BBC has forged ahead in the digital age, Murdoch seeks to punish the corporation for doing what commercial media businesses initially failed to do.

On a visit a couple of years ago to the BBC floor occupied by the editorial staff running its websites, I admit that my eyes popped. At the time, more people were employed solely on the BBC's online journalism (and staffing has increased since then) than on the websites of all the national newspaper titles put together.

Though I have some misgivings about that, it should be seen as an entirely natural consequence of the BBC's progression into the digital age. Its executives realise that televisions and radios are not going to be the first choice of viewers and listeners forever.

The transmission of video, audio and text is being enjoyed through computer terminals and mobile phones. These are the screens that count for the future and the BBC, if it is to go on serving its licence fee payers, must ensure that it reaches its audience.

If we constrain the BBC's technological growth then we face the likelihood of losing what is most valuable about a public service news provider that is admired across the world, namely its journalistic authority and credibility. I say that even though I accept that it is not, and never could be, an impartial source.

Murdoch may dislike the fact that it is funded by the public, at a price set by the government of the day, but he is wrong to see this as an inhibition of independence. It is not an arm of the state.

Anyway, it is a bit rich for him to lambast the BBC for driving competitors from the field with its (alleged) financial muscle when his company has been prepared to spend countless millions on expanding its market share — witness everything from buying a 17.9% stake in ITV and price-cutting The Sun to the launch of the freesheet thelondonpaper (which he is now closing after three years because of heavy losses).

As we contemplate the possibility of some form of public funding for regional and local papers, because their publishers cannot turn a profit, it is as well to remind ourselves, and Murdoch, that there has to be another way when commerce fails.