Media: Ownership

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on the topicality of this debate, his excellent speech and the work that he has done in this area, not least on the Communications Act 2003. Because of his initiative we are able to debate media ownership today and if there are any outstanding questions, they can be cleared up in the Question I will ask next Thursday.

We learnt this morning that Dr Vince Cable has decided to refer to Ofcom the News Corporation bid for full control of BSkyB. It is suggested that a number of Conservatives are unhappy with that decision. I do not know who these unnamed people are but I think that this is an excellent decision, made even better by the fact that it was taken so speedily. I congratulate the Secretary of State on that. It means that in this debate we can get down to the question of where the public interest lies in this and similar cases. I should like to make three points. First, I believe that the news media have a vital role in a democracy. They report news from home and overseas and can expose injustice and challenge officialdom and any Government. Healthy media set out a whole range of views. It follows that a media concentrated in too few hands can have the effect of limiting freedom of expression and diversity of view—the hallmark of a democratic state—and can give too much power to a company or individual.

I add a warning to those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. We need to treat with caution rivals who make the public interest case. In this case, News Corporation is opposed by a coalition of newspapers and the BBC. I suspect that some of the newspapers would dearly like to have the market position of Mr Murdoch while the BBC is not perhaps in the strongest position to talk about market dominance given its political influence and the enormously strong position of radio news. Above all, we should remember the special interests of the political parties, which are not so much concerned about excessive power as that that power should support them. In this case, there is a nice choice for the political managers between backing News Corporation or one of the prominent members of the coalition opposing it—the Daily Mail. All this means that there is an overwhelming need for independent judgment to be exercised on these issues, which underlines the importance of the Communications Select Committee. Its justification must be its independence, which it needs to be fearless in exerting. I therefore welcome this case being put to the independent judgment of Ofcom.

My second point is that we do not need to speculate about the views of Mr Murdoch. He set them out frankly to the Communications Select Committee. We were well ahead on this issue a couple of years ago, when we interviewed him in New York. On the position of Sky News, he said it would be more popular if, in style, it were more like the Fox News channel in the United States. Why was that not the case, we asked? According to Mr Murdoch:

“Nobody at Sky listens to me”.

That presumably would not be a problem when full control is taken.

On the control over his newspapers, he was again frank. On the Sun and the News of the World, he said he was what he called the traditional proprietor, exercising control on major issues such as which party to back in a general election. As for the control of ownership, he was entirely scathing; he believed that Britain was 10 years out of date, given that there were so many news outlets for the public to choose from.

That brings me to my third and last point. Does the growth of the internet mean that ownership in this area can be left to the market? I do not believe that it does, for the following reason. All surveys show that the main source of news in the United Kingdom is television —74 per cent of the population rely on it—behind that are newspapers, the radio, and finally the internet, at 6 per cent. That may well change, but that is how things stand. Nor do I buy the argument that because News Corporation owns almost 40 per cent of the shares of BSkyB, nothing will change if it takes full control. Self-evidently, full control means just that.

The issue here is that Mr Murdoch’s company already owns newspapers which account for 37 per cent of national newspaper sales in this country. The company now wants to take full control of BSkyB, whose revenue is greater than that of the BBC. The case for this being brought in and reviewed independently is overwhelming, and I am one of those who believes that the public interest is not served by this bid going ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, when you think about it, I am afraid that Vince Cable has shot our fox—whether from high principle or from funk at the thought of the ferocity of the assault that he should expect from the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, I do not know. Seriously, however, we should not for one minute underestimate the importance of the decision that was taken this morning. Just think of the counterfactual of no reference being made. Whatever arguments Mr Cable’s department could have cobbled together for that, the message would have been absolutely clear—that Rupert Murdoch stood above any British Government and their powers. By making that reference today, that myth is destroyed. Power, as a famous American columnist once said, is being believed to have power, and today the complete belief that Mr Murdoch had total power has been set back—a great moment for our democracy.

I think that I am in a unique position among those who have spoken in this debate: I have worked for Rupert Murdoch. I was economics editor after he took over the Sunday Times and Simon Jenkins’s deputy at the Times. I am glad that this debate has not demonised the man. I can report frankly on Mr Murdoch’s interventions. I remember only one instruction that came down from the chairman; namely, Simon and I were told that whatever we might think of the column written by the late Lord Wyatt, he was under the chairman’s protection and could not be removed. We sometimes had difficulty in explaining that to our critics who were not as enamoured as the chair of the content of that column.

What happened by way of self-censorship is another matter. These things are much more complex than they are believed to be. But the idea that a crudity of power is exercised is badly overdone. The fact of ownership conveys quite a lot of power in itself. We have heard a lot about news today, which is important. We are protected in news to some extent by the impartiality rules, which is a great thing, although those rules are always under siege, including from the great chairman himself. We cannot take it for granted that they will always by there.

I worry slightly more about a different kind of plurality—cultural plurality. If you think of a News International of the size that is contemplated—two BBCs—imagine the effect that that would have on the marketplace for the cultural product that is television; for example, for the balance on our screens between American productions, European productions and British productions. I do not think that you will find Mr Murdoch, an American, saying, “Oh, we must keep up the European and British content”. That will affect what is made and what is shown. There are many other ways in which ownership, in effect, affects culture. Although I yield to no one in my admiration for American culture, I would like plurality of culture as well as plurality of media.

Following the sentiment expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber, although not perhaps the content of his recipe for it, my final point is that the single biggest protection we as a nation have of plurality of provision and of variety of what we consume is the BBC, especially so in a week when ITV has admitted that its object is to achieve the lowest common denominator.

[Lord Fowler]

You certainly succeeded in that.

[Lord Lipsey]

I defer of course to the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, in that matter.

A strong BBC is absolutely at the centre of a varied and plural media in this country, which is why the brutal beating administered to the corporation last week by the Government is one which we will repent of at leisure.