Pre-Wapping His Fleet Street Papers Generated 45% of Murdoch's

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Pre-Wapping His Fleet Street Papers Generated 45% of Murdoch's

Cable Street Unstoppable rise of Murdoch … so far Pre-Wapping his Fleet Street Big corporations, especially multi-nationals such as papers generated 45% of News Corporation, dominate Britain’s media. Murdoch’s profits. Post- These companies care more about money, power and influence than Wapping the boost in profits about news and journalism, slashing staff and production costs from the papers funded his irrespective of the damage to the quality of their publications. global expansion. He Newspaper journalism is declining into celebrity-led consumerism acquired the Twentieth and empty sensationalist reporting. Sales slump as the public goes elsewhere for its news. Murdoch newspapers have led this trend, Century Fox film studio, dragging the rest of the press down with them. Their racist and created the Fox TV network reactionary reporting insults all working people. in the States, and launched The Wapping dispute was the media’s most significant single step Sky in the UK in 1990. in this direction. Murdoch’s News Corporation now controls 37 per We are facing a critical cent of national newspaper circulation, and the biggest commercial TV operation in Europe – BSkyB. moment in the UK in terms of media ownership. News The enormous investment required to launch Sky satellite TV came “ from the profits at Wapping as the the value of Murdoch’s Corporation’s acquisition of newspapers quadrupled after the strike. BSkyB will give it the Rupert Murdoch cultivated Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and leverage to distort, damage turned the Sun , formerly a Labour paper, into a strident Tory or destroy other media mouthpiece. Now, thanks to the new Conservative-led government, it is about to finalise its outright ownership of BSkyB, whose We need urgently to change revenues are 50 per cent higher than those of the BBC. our laws on media ownership to protect media diversity and plurality. We need a diverse, democratically accountable media. Granville Williams, Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom PK sorting pic from Guy Smallman. NUJ pic Never far from controversy. Murdoch’s proposal to take over BSkyB is widely viewed as a threat to democracy. “ Boycott campaign poster from 1986. With apologies to a famous Australian lager campaign..

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