FREENo 206 Spring 2016£1 Journal Press of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom LEVESON THEY’RE AFTER CHANNEL 4 Privatisation … AS IF 3 giveaway in IT DIDN’T photo grab HAPPEN IT WAS THIRTY years almost to the day since Rupert REVENGE Murdoch triggered the traumatic dispute at Wapping OF LOCAL that his son James made his own big move in London. READERS The former chairman of BSkyB and chief executive of News International returned to head Sky TV, the cable They want network now rebranded as his father’s domain. the papers The former BSkyB satellite network is even bigger 4 that Big and richer than it was when James was whisked to New York for fear of arrest in the wake of the phone- Media hacking scandal that had exploded in July 2011. don’t Sky TV was first launched using the enhanced BACK: James Murdoch BACK: Rebekah Brooks profits that Murdoch’s News Corporation had generated as a result of Wapping, when on January 25 1986 he In these ways did the UK authorities give the green sacked 5,500 workers and moved production to a the light for the resumption of business as usual for the new plant there, with a ready-trained non-union strike- Murdochs. They might think it’s all over, which would breaking workforce. be another scandal in itself. But it shouldn’t be. James Murdoch’s return followed that last There are three ways in which the seemingly September of Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the relentless progress of the Murdoch media can Sun and News of the World, who indeed was arrested be checked: and charged over phone-hacking and the bribing of 1. The Leveson Inquiry must be resumed. Its spec- EUROPE’S public officials, to be sensationally acquitted after tacular hearings in 2012 were intended only as MEDIA a ten-month trial at the Old Bailey. She the first part of Lord Justice Leveson’s work. MUDDLE resumed her role as head of News UK, With the trials then due, it was decreed as the newspaper group was likewise What that he could not investigate who Questions on regulation in rebranded as part of the corporate Wapping did what over phone-hacking and 8 scheme to erase the scandal. considered instead the associated EU vote Their rehabilitation has been ethical questions raised about enabled by a series of strokes of meant for the press and their relations legal good fortune. The trials of with politicians. lower-level scapegoats from News media Stage Two, the inquiry into International (NI) papers have all Pages 6–7 “unlawful activities” at NI and its finished; prosecutors have announced dealings with police, was supposed there will be no more cases and the to start when the trials finish. The Metropolitan Police, who took a bashing from government would have to activate it. Well, the right-wing press, have wound up the various the trials ended last year, but no word as yet on operations investigating the cases. Leveson. In fact there has been so much specula- More importantly for the company and its bosses, tion that it will never take place that even Tory culture For all campaign news go to prosecutors have also said there will be no corporate secretary John Whittingdale has said it would be “very cpbf.org.uk prosecution. That was the big worry for the Murdochs: strange that actually the most important questions Email: it might have led to a similar process in the US, which [email protected] would have been serious. ,,continued page 6 Mirror boss’s pay rises as sales and profits fall GIANT REGIONAL and national daily paper New Day in an attempt phone-hacking at its national titles. for 50p, though the first edition newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror to find new ways of generating A charge of £12 million had been was given away free. 2 million gave chief executive Simon Fox a 45 income from print. made in 2014. were printed. per cent pay rise for a year in which During 2015 revenue from Even though prosecutors It has a staff of only 25 people operating profit fell by 25 per cent. print fell from £521.6 million to have announced there will be no and is expected to break even if Last year’s profit was £82.2 £458.9 million. more charges, the company still regular paid-for sales reach 200,000. million but Fox’s pay was up from They showed also that TM made faces civil claims over the long- TM is hoping to emulate the £1.68 million to £2.35 million. a provision of £29 million for the denied intrusions. success of the upmarket tabloid i, The accounts were published the cost of dealing with civil claims New Day, a middle-market, which the Independent group that day TM launched its new cut-price arising from the widespread use of middle-of-the-road tabloid, will sell launched it in 2010 has just sold off. ‘It’s worth buying it up just for the ads’ THE INDEPENDENT’S cut-price spin-off the i The paper’s circulation is around 268,000 – has been sold for £24 million to a big regional while the Independent’s was 56,000 and The publisher that wants its advertising reach. Ashley Independent on Sunday’s 93,000. ■ Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press, told Staff at the Independent have condemned the business paper City AM: “This is a scale game the closure of the daily and Sunday print titles and we wanted to go after more national adver- and cast doubt on managers’ promise to improve tising revenue and have a bigger train set across the quality of the website as the company which to offer our digital services.” transfers to a digital-only format. They said the The i’s in-house editorial team is to expand move was likely to cost about 100 jobs while from 17 to 51. There will be an £850,000-a- staff in a statement said they were “deeply year deal to buy content from the Independent sceptical about the company’s ability to generate website and the Evening Standard, still owned by confidence in the new Independent website Yevgeny Lebedev. Content will also come from while downgrading existing terms and conditions Johnston Press regional titles. for new roles”. BUT WAS IT EVER? IT HAD long since ceased to be least regarded as feasible. manage to stick to them outgoing Conservative-Liberal independent, but the demise They were independence for long, but even the coalition – which wasn’t even of the paper that managed to from political parties, big compromised version could standing! A little bit of social carry the name for 30 years is a business, advertisers, sponsors not survive the competition of conscience to mask the malign tiny milestone on the triumphal and public relations, and corporate media power. Tory neo-liberalism, eh? procession of Big Media. conservative media values At last year’s UK general The Independent was so It might have become the such as unthinking nationalism election under Yevgeny eviscerated that its pale plaything of a vain and rich and deference to the royal Lebedev’s uninformed cut-price imitation, the i, Russian social climber but family. They are unthinkable direction the paper that became a bigger success. So there was a time when the for commercial publishers now. pledged never to be partisan he sold it. notions it stood for were at The Independent didn’t called for support for the Tim Gopsill MEMBERSHIP RATES PER YEAR AFFILIATION BY ORGANISATION a) Individual membership £15 f) Fewer than 500 members £25 g) 500 to 1,000 £30 the b) Unwaged £6 Join c) Supporting membership £25 h) 1,000 to 10,000 £50 (includes free CPBF publications) i) 10,000 to 50,000 £115 campaign d) Institutions (eg libraries) £25 j) 50,000 to 100,000 £225 BBC (includes 10 copies of FREE Press) k) Over 100,000 £450 for press I/We want to join the CPBF and enclose a cheque/PO for £ _______________________ and broadcasting Name Address freedom Postcode ___________________________________________________________Tel Email Join online Organisation (if applicable) at www.cpbf.org.uk Return form to CPBF, 23 Orford Road, London E17 9NL, 07729 846 146, [email protected] 2 Free Press Spring 2016 Channel 4 BACK STEVE sell-off: the picture told the story THE GOVERNMENT was caught Steve Back, who has captured a lying when it denied planning to number of such embarrassing privatise Channel 4 television but a exclusives over the years. It showed photographer caught an image of a an unidentified aide carrying document showing it was consid- the incriminating document to ering the move. a meeting. The revelation came at a After the photo was published meeting held in Parliament by the the Prime Minister had to confirm National Union of Journalists in that the sale was on the agenda, Incriminating document snapped in Downing Street February. Scottish National Party John Nicholson said. “The cat was media frontbencher John Nicholson out of the bag.” wanted to sell it off then but he standards. So I thought, why do it? said that Culture Secretary John He said that recently retired had used his powers to block it. But now they are trying again.” Whittingdale had come to the chairman of Channel 4 Lord Burns “I felt strongly about this,” he Dorothy Byrne, head of news DCMS select committee and said had been trying to work up a plan said.