SKY TAKEOVER: 300,000 SIGNERS SAY … DAVID SHANKBONE/WIKIMEDIA DONALD2 TRUMP and ALT-REALITY Can the Mainstream Media Stand up We’Ll to Him? Stop Him
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Centre pageMURDOCH pull-outSTOP BUYING SKY FREENo 210 Spring 2017£1 Journal Press of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom SKY TAKEOVER: 300,000 SIGNERS SAY … DAVID SHANKBONE/WIKIMEDIA DAVID DONALD2 TRUMP AND ALT-REALITY Can the mainstream media stand up We’ll to him? stop him NO 4ADS, NO CLICKBAIT, JUST JOURNALISM County gets real local again! news online RUPERT MURDOCH’S 21st Century Fox is making a They had no idea how many and how deeply people second bid to takeover Sky TV, and once again a popular resented the abuse of power by the Murdoch media, movement is bidding to stop him. and now there’s a much wider range of people for Six years ago Murdoch’s attempt to buy up the whom the prospect of their power extending even 61 per cent of Sky he doesn’t already own crashed in further is intolerable. flames as the phone-hacking scandal exploded around They contend that Murdoch, with his record of his London newspapers. bullying, influence-peddling and corruption, is not a But it was already facing mounting opposition, “fit and proper person” to have complete control of the particularly from a new style of popular campaigning, network. The regulator Ofcom has a power to conduct the online activism of Avaaz and 38 Degrees, which the “fit and proper” test to media firms, but it is not a circulated a petition that reached 150,000 signatures. required part of the takeover procedure. 9 In 2017 both Former chairman DISTORTIONS are working with a TOUCH AND GO FOR SKY BID of the BBC Sir Michael coalition of media Lyons challenged her AND LIES … reformers, which Turn to page 3 to “do anything in her Rail workers brave include the CPBF. This power to resist the media as well time 38 Degrees has WHAT TAKEOVER WOULD DO further growth in the already handed in a Murdochs’ grip on news as bosses petition to culture , How they pressure government and media”. secretary Karen Bradley Shadow culture with more than , How you can join the campaign secretary Tom Watson, 300,000 names. who played a key role “Giving even more Special 4-page pullout in exposing crimi- control over our media nality within Murdoch to one man is a serious threat to our democracy,” newspapers, said the prime minister needed to come said Maggie Chao, campaigner at 38 Degrees. “Rupert clean on what she discussed with Murdoch when they Murdoch is not fit and proper to take even more control met last September. over the news we read and watch.” The former Labour leader Ed Miliband asked: “Do we For all campaign news and Industry experts have been persuaded by Murdoch’s want Rupert Murdoch controlling even more of media info go to cpbf.org.uk managers that the takeover will pass comfortably landscape? No.” And to Theresa May: “You said you Email: through the regulatory process … but so they were would stand up to the powerful. No better test than [email protected] in 2010-11. Murdoch bid for Sky. Over to you.” USA The alt-reality of the alt-right GRANVILLE WILLIAMS Commission (FCC), which regulates the media reports on the problems industry. Already the FCC has started its assault on CAN THEY of the US media that regulations that maintain media fairness and inde- they helped to create by pendence. Its new chair is Ajit Pai, a Republican HACK IT? lawyer who worked for the broadband internet TRUMP’S SELF-PROCLAIMED “running hyping Donald Trump provider Verizon (formerly part of Bell and before that AT&T). Ajit Pai strongly opposed the 2015 war with the media” and journalists net neutrality rules that reclassified broadband (“among the most dishonest human THE NOTION that the US “liberal mainstream providers and treated them like a public utility. In beings on earth”) encourages suspicion media” are crooked and deceitful goes back December he vowed to take a “weedwhacker” to and confusion. The test will be how to the late 1940s and 1950s. But President what he considers unnecessary regulations and robust the media which are not Donald Trump, the Fox News-Breitbart axis and said that net neutrality’s “days are numbered”. compliant with Trump can be – not so a conservative ecosystem that includes blogs, The Republicans have a new majority at the much in responding to his diversionary Facebook pages, and conspiracy sites have taken FCC. Ajit Pai has long maintained that under tweets and off-the-cuff comments, but it to a whole new level. former Chairman Thomas Wheeler it over- in reporting and documenting the reality There is now a gaping divide as two parallel stepped its bounds, suggesting that he would media systems, mainstream and right-wing, steer the agency in a direction more favourable of his regime. promote facts and alternative facts and describe to big phone and cable companies. Pai opposes They will have to jettison notions of reality and alternative reality. online privacy regulations that force broadband “fair and balanced” when the President Trump creates his own reality, which providers to ask consumers for permission before and his staff reject objective truths and is why his attack on media that challenge using their data. embrace conspiracy theories. Will they him is so vehement. His idea of the media The FCC is likely to allow more huge mergers; be up to the task? as the “opposition party” is also unreal. The Pai voted to approve AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of The coalition of extreme right-wing “mainstream”, or corporate media are highly DirecTV and has said he would do the same for websites like Infowars, Drudge Report, concentrated – 90 percent of them owned and Comcast’s effort to acquire Time Warner Cable. controlled by six multinational corporations – and The cable industry’s trade group, the NCTA, The Gateway Pundit, LifeZette, and hardly left-wing or liberal. has supported him, saying he has a “common- Breitbart serve as bridges between The six corporations function, like all big sense philosophy that consumers are best the alt-right fringes of the internet and corporations, to make big profits. This rationale served by a robust marketplace that encourages the conservative mainstream media. that led them to cover Trump excessively during investment, innovation and competition.” They have a sophisticated level of the primaries. As Les Moonves, chief executive Another Trump target will be the Corporation coordination which facilitates the spread of CBS, remarked: Trump’s campaign “may not for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This provides funds of fake news into the mainstream media. be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” for National Public Radio (NPR) and television The right-wing media infrastructure Some opposition! (PBS). The CPB budget to support these services is well established, in the mainstream Trump’s media assault is selective, focusing was $445m in 2015. Donald Trump intends to particularly on CNN and the New York Times but follow a list of budget cuts, suggested by the as well as the fringe. Fox News began exempting Murdoch’s media empire. Murdoch conservative Heritage Foundation, one of which in 1996. Mainstream conservative news has been running Fox News in person since the is that the CPB should be privatised. outlets, spanning talk radio and Fox departure of Roger Ailes. The key three prime hours Such an action will not cut much off the News, have fomented a toxic alternative on Fox News are now presented daily by Trump Federal budget but it will undermine one vital reality within which a constellation supporters and the White House has easy access. source of independent reporting and current of fake news-purveying websites Trump asked Rupert Murdoch to put forward affairs programmes which many Americans has thrived. candidates to run the Federal Communications rely on. I THINK IT’S PROBABLY BETTER FOR ME NOT TO GO INTO HOW THE INTERVIEW AROSE … RUPERT MURDOCH was years. Numerous photos were an interview to confirm that we had the – what’s the word present during Michael Gove’s taken of the encounter in Murdoch was there, he gave a ... I think it’s probably better grovelling interview with Trump Tower, some showing strange reply. for me not to go into how the Trump, published in The Times Gove giving an excited “The best thing to say I interview arose or how it came on January 16, according to thumbs-up signal. think, in fairness is, um, in about but I think it’s entirely the Financial Times. But Murdoch appeared in securing the interview, I think fair for people to make a set The Murdoch and Trump none of them. the fact that it was the Times of conclusions or assumptions families have been close for When Gove was asked in newspaper and the fact that about that,” he said. 2 Free Press Spring 2017 GUY SMALLMAN Demonstration against the takeover of Sky by the Murdochs in 2011; the same is happening again LAWS AND ORDERS Touch and go timing The big questions in media politics that up to 20 million emails were deleted in government will oppose but may get through; – Murdoch and Sky, phone- 2010 and 2011, to destroy evidence of the pair’s there is a lot of opposition to Murdoch media hacking, Leveson and media complicity in the phone-hacking operation, in both houses of Parliament. Contentious regulation – are entwined in a after police launched their criminal investiga- amendments often go through the Lords at the tion. News International (now called News UK) last minute in the rush to get legislation through chaotic timetable that could affect contends that any deletion of emails was part of in time, and the DE Bill has a very tight deadline.