LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

by RAY FLEMING
TWENTY years ago, in his McTagggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, Rupert Murdoch said: “Television is a business and should not be the preserve of a publicly-supported duopoly of the BBC and ITV.” This year, James Murdoch, Rupert's son, said in his McTaggart Lecture that in respect of the independence of the media, “The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantee of independence is profit.” A chip off the old block, indeed. James Murdoch's lecture was a sustained attack on almost every aspect of TV in Britian today - with the exception of BSkyB, of which he is non-executive chairman. He found fault with the “authoritarian” regulator Ofcom and, of course, with almost everything that the BBC stands for and does. He was lavish with his references to “state television” which he appeared to equate with the BBC and quoted George Orwell's warning in 1984 that “to let the state enjoy a near monopoly of information is to guarantee manipulation and distortion.” Mr Murdoch's Lecture deserves longer and deeper analysis than there is space for here. But one of his comments needs to be dealt with immediately. He said that Sky News should be freed from the requirement to treat the news impartially which he described as “an infringement on freedom of speech”. Those who would like to see where this reform would lead should tune to Murdoch's US Fox News whose slogan of “fair and balanced” is regularly abused and torn to shreds by appallingly partial and unbalanced reporting.