The Guardian newspaper in the UK yesterday published an extract from the Mactaggart Lecture presented by James Murdoch, son of Rupert.
While the main purpose of the speech was to attack the BBC for interfering in the free market in news , where Fox has demonstrated the benign and positive nature of the market (snark), it included a quite remarkable attack on one of the sacred tenets of much of Fox News’s base.
Murdoch decided that it would be a good idea to attack the BBC by describing it as having a place in the market akin to the way Creationists describe the world. No, I don’t see how that analogy works either. But I would love to see how Fox’s viewers might respond to comments like this:
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. Darwin argued that dramatic evolutionary changes occur through a natural process. He proved that evolution is unmanaged.
These views were an enormous challenge to Victorian religious orthodoxy and remain a provocation to many today. The number who cling to creationism is substantial – and they crop up in surprising places...
While creationism may provide an illusion of certainty, it has harmful effects.
The Guardian’s Emily Bell has given some thought to Murdoch’s inadvertent personal demonstration of the issues in the ongoing debate about Darwinism and nature versus nurture.
As the son of Rupert, it is impossible to say whether his apparent hatred of regulation and the licence fee is hardwired into his DNA or is a result of the highly charged circumstances of his nurture. Whatever the case, the remarkable genetic similarities with his ancestor were highly apparent.
The actual theme of Murdoch’s lecture was that having a state-subsidised media outlet
threatens significant damage to the provision of independent news, to investment in professional journalism, and to the growth of the creative industries... We should instead trust consumers, embrace private enterprise and profit, and reduce the activities of the state in our sector.
According to this scion of the owner of Fox News,
Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.
And there was me thinking that the provision of news so as to have an informed population was a public good that should be available to everyone.
Murdoch has certainly created waves with his lecture. In her article referenced above, Emily Bell describes the concept of charging for news content on the web as
an idea as quaint as it is implausible
She also contrasts his approach to Government intervention in the delivery of news (it should keep out) with the position with regard to file sharing (it should get stuck in).
"Trust people" he says. Although, he suggests, not those millions who illegally fileshare – as they are thieves and should be treated as such. An area where the government has hitherto "dithered". Governmental intervention is very welcome when it curbs what the market has really decided – that some forms of digital content is free.
The BBC’s respected economic reporter Robert Peston has also had a run-in with Murdoch following the lecture.
The BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, was involved in an astonishing slanging match with James Murdoch following the News Corporation chief's speech to television executives in Edinburgh where he accused the BBC of mounting a "land grab".
Peston, like other BBC executives, was critical of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV festival on Friday, in which the News Corp chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia described the size and ambitions of the BBC as "chilling"...
At an official dinner following the speech, Murdoch and Peston – who were sitting with the Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark and the BBC chairman, Sir Michael Lyons – became involved in a discussion about banking deregulation which progressed to the flashpoint of whether or not the BBC was patrician, according to those who were there.
Murdoch apparently banged the table and shouted: "How dare you?" with Peston shouting back: "If you think you can get fucking angry, I can get fucking angry."
A source close to Murdoch, who oversees BSkyB as well as newspapers including the Sun and the Times, described the incident as a "vigorous exchange of views".
In his own speech to the festival yesterday, Peston asked whether there was any "rational basis for believing that withdrawing all regulation and subsidy from the news market would be any less costly to our way of life".
Fortunately Murdoch is unlikely to gain much traction here in the UK. John Whittingdale, a Conservative who chairs an important Parliamentary committee responsible for media and broadcasting, responded that
the Conservatives would be "unlikely to agree" with News Corporation executive James Murdoch's comments in the MacTaggart lecture and afterwards in Edinburgh that the BBC should have its remit and funding significantly stripped back.
So in the UK at least, there is hope for those of us who think the biggest threat to news delivery is dishonest, lying, propaganda spewing sewers like Fox News, rather than an independently managed, state-funded mandatorily even-handed outlet.