Hutton "whitewash" verdict back in 2004
“Whitewash” was the instant reaction from the forces arrayed against News Corp’s purchase of the whole of BskyB following Jeremy Hunt’s approval of the media giant’s “hiving off Sky News” remedy.
Oddly it’s the identical response to the Hutton Report into the death of Dr David Kelly, with often the same groups roughly on the liberal-left furious with the outcome.
The Hutton Report was a “whitewash” to casual observers because it didn’t lambast Tony Blair for taking us into an illegal war.
Instead it exonerated the Government on the narrow grounds of not knowingly misleading the public and turned its guns on the BBC’s “defective” editorial practices. It was extremely unpopular and about the only person happy with the outcome was Alastair Campbell.
The same air of establishment “stitch-up” surrounds the Hunt ruling but again on the narrow grounds he was required to take into account – news plurality, not the impact of the BskyB behemoth on wider media plurality and its ability to put others at a disadvantage – his decision is understandable, if not widely popular.
Murdoch is a “bogey man” no less than Campbell was in the Iraq case. But even Greg Dyke admits he can’t get worked up about the BSkyB deal. “I was never that concerned about the BSkyB takeover. It seemed to me that Murdoch controlled Sky for as long as I can remember,” says the BBC boss who lost his job over Hutton. He’s more concerned about whether the new BSkyB entity will pay tax to the UK coffers or be submerged within News Corp’s reluctance to pay tax to the exchequer.
This website first revealed the opposition to the takeover by Claire Enders, the influential media analyst. http://www.beehivecity.com/newspapers/why-rupert-murdochs-bid-for-sky-should-be-blocked123456/
She expressed concerns over the Murdoch family’s potential dominance of news and TV in a memo, designed to stiffen the spine of Vince Cable, the Business Secretary who dropped the ball so spectacularly.
It’s instructive that, after speaking with Jeremy Hunt yesterday, Enders is now happy with the solution agreed. She says: “This is a very elegant solution to a set of technical problems which is designed to preserve the status quo in UK news plurality.
“The ten-year deal means that Sky News now has a greater certainty over its future than BBC News, which only has certainty over its licence fee revenue until 2016.
“This solution is hard to attack in law. It’s been devised by the Oft and Ofcom, the established regulators of our industry and News Corp has accepted the principle of media plurality and the role of the regulator.”
“The wider question of the scale and scope of News Corp is a political one and beyond the scope of this legislation. Whatever the concerns about bundling products together with the News Corp newspapers, the European Commission already cleared the deal on competition grounds.”
“There are outstanding questions in the long-form agreements, like what happens if the 60.9 % of the company if shares are be acquired by another party that alters media plurality? But that’s not an outcome that News Corp can predict.”
And what if Cable hadn’t been flattered by the two Telegraph reporters? He would have accepted Ofcom’s report expressing concern about news plurality without question. He would have referred the matter instantly to the Competition Commission without inviting News Corp to offer an alternative remedy.
And the Competition Commission, with its focus on hard numbers, might have found the Ofcom report’s maths fatally flawed and approved the bid without any requirement for News Corp to protect the independence of Sky News or continue to support it.
Then “I’m at war with Murdoch” Cable would have had to reject the Competition Commission report and even David Cameron might have taken an interest in the legal quagmire that would follow.
If Enders really believes this deal protects plurality, she might not be worthy of the praise for her expertise.
Sky News will still be more than one-third owned by News Corp; News Corp will be its main customer by quite some distance. If you believe that this has created an independent Sky News, then you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of a client-producer relationship.
Besides: isn’t the more pressing point that BSkyB would now control a large swathe of programming, and access to the distribution platform? BT were – rightly – forced to spin off OpenReach when it had a similar position for telephony distribution and services. Why are BSkyB allowed to do the same in digital television?