Murdoch Attempting to Buy the UK General Election for the Conservative Party
Politics / UK General Election Nov 14, 2009 - 07:28 AMBy: Nadeem_Walayat
The Murdoch News International press is openly engaged in a campaign to bring about a Conservative Government in lieu of Tory promises for News International favourable government policies.
This week we saw the Sun sparked story concerning Gordon Brown's hand written condolence letter to the mother of a solider killed in Afghanistan that contained spelling mistakes. The Sun instigated a viscous attack on the Prime Minster and used the bereaved Mother to attempt to damage Gordon Brown which was implemented in a coordinated manner by the relentless reporting of by Murdoch's Sky News channel. The BBC responded to this and other newspaper coverage to continue the story into the end of the week. However the whole story has backfired on the Murdoch press as the electorate clearly sided more with the Prime Minister than the biased propaganda emanating out of the Sun.
The Murdoch's press strategy is clearly motivated by self interest as I pointed out in August (News Corporation's Murdoch Blames BBC For Driving Independent Journalism Out of Business), that the Murdoch press is making huge losses in an media market place that is being decimated by the internet and the state run BBC broadcaster against which the Murdoch press for obvious reasons cannot compete.
James Murdoch stated:
"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,"
"The BBC is dominant, Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and growing."
"It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,"
The answer to the problem of the internet and the BBC is clearly for the Murdoch press to seek favour from a new government policy in reward for electioneering support that will result in a government that is willing to implement policies to diminish the competition poised by both the BBC and the internet.
At the beginning of October the Murdoch press accelerated its objective of winning favour amongst the tory party leadership by the Sun publically declaring its backing for the Conservative party some 6 months ahead of the next General Election.
This has been subsequently been followed by favourable policy proposals out of the Conservative party in the commercial interests of News International such as reported in the Independent in response to Peter Mandelson's allegations of the Tory leaders being suspected of having done a deal with Murdoch.
Examples of the apparent tie-in between what News International's boss, James Murdoch, wants, and what David Cameron is ready to promise include the recent decision by the Conservatives to abandon the idea of "top slicing" the BBC licence fee. It had been proposed that part of the money paid to the BBC would be siphoned off to help regional television companies meet the threat from the internet. But this would also have helped them compete more effectively against Sky News, which is part of the Murdoch media empire.
When the policy was abandoned in September, Jeremy Hunt, the shadow Culture Secretary, said that it was because enacting it might make the commercial television companies "focus not on attracting viewers but on attracting subsidies". There was no gain for the BBC in the climb down, because David Cameron had already said that the Tories will freeze the licence fee. What it will mean is that the BBC's income will be capped, without the regional television companies seeing any government help, which will strengthen the market position of Britain's only satellite television company, Sky. "This was done for News International," a Tory insider said yesterday. "Murdoch wants Sky to go head to head with the BBC. He doesn't want the independent companies strengthened."
In April 2008, James Murdoch complained bitterly about the media regulator Ofcom in his first major speech after taking over as chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia. The following year, David Cameron announced that a Conservative government would cut Ofcom down to size.
The rest of the mainstream press in their self interest is secretly supportive of these measures of restriction's on the BBC and the internet competition and therefore unlikely to report on this subject to any significant length.
The campaign in favour of a Conservative party by a tory friendly Murdoch press dates back much earlier than the Sun's September announcement of support, as illustrated by the June 09 Sun newspaper article that forecast a Conservative landslide victory of 414 seats, against my own projection of 343 seats which is suggestive of biased propaganda rather than real journalism.
Therefore readers of the Murdoch Press including the Sun and Sky News viewers, should take much of the coverage of the General Election campaign with a big pinch of salt as it is biased propaganda in favour of an outcome that will reward News International in monetary terms, i.e. we are back to an age of press barons such as Rupert Murdoch attempting to buy the next general election for the Conservative Party for influence.
Source: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article15049.html
By Nadeem Walayat
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk
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Nadeem Walayat has over 20 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis specialises on the housing market and interest rates. Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. We present in-depth analysis from over 300 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets. Thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk
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