The reported rant by James Murdoch against the BBC and the "The expansion of state-sponsored journalism” probably raises all sorts of questions; one of which is just how much News Corporation - which occasionally bears a chilling resemblance to Cyberdyne Industries - has itself over the years represented “a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision” to coin a phrase.
It remains to be seen if there is a similar bout of organised venting from Welsh newspaper editors and proprietors over the perceived threat of council produced publications as they gloomily survey this month’s ABC figures. All six main regional titles show a hefty drop in circulation.
Daily Post (North Wales) 33,938, -5.3%
South Wales Argus (Newport) 26,667, -5.6%
Evening Leader (Wrexham) 19,437, -8.1%
South Wales Evening Post (Swansea) 46,069, -10.1%
Western Mail (Cardiff) 32,926, -11.4%
South Wales Echo (Cardiff) 39,361, -11.8%
It's usually the case that any chance of a reasoned debate is lost when newspaper proprietors start to talk like their own publications. Especially when they make claims that the scale of the BBC is a threat to independent journalism and that the BBC Trust and media regulator Ofcom are unaccountable. Murdoch may have recognised that the boundaries between previously separate forms of communication such as TV, newspapers and publishing have eroded, creating an "all-media market" but describing the evolving role of public broadcasting as Orwellian is just silly.
Having told an invited audience that the BBC feels empowered and obliged to try to offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market because it is funded by a universal hypothecated tax, he apparently insisted that "the only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit."
What will institution-loving David Cameron will make of that one?
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