Murdoch
Murdoch
His Times, Sunday Times,
News of the World and Sun
are small parts of his News
Corporation conglomerate…
Between 1988 and 1999, its
British division didn't pay a
penny in corporation tax, despite
making profits of £1.4 billion.
What was the deal he made with Blair?
James Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC
The scope of the BBC's activities and
ambitions was "chilling", he added.
Organisations like the BBC, funded by the
licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom,
made it harder for other broadcasters to
survive, he argued. 'Chilling'
James Murdoch, the chief executive of BSkyBm,
with David Cameron.
•The Guardian, Friday 26 March 2010
Why is he so happy – what deal has
he struck with Cameron ?????
•The Guardian, Friday 26 March 2010
Fox News Gives Juan Williams $2
Million Contract
World Economic Forum
At this conference he asked to hear
the views of Nobel Laureates
email
Dear Professor Kroto,
We hope this e-mail finds you well. As you
know, this year, Mr. Rupert Murdoch, will be
participating at the STS forum.
Mr. Murdoch would like to organize a small
gathering to exchange views with a few
eminent scientists.
Sir John Cornforth
Australian Man of the Year 1975
Nobel Laureate 1975
If ever (which all possible gods forbid) I had to meet
Murdoch there are two questions I would ask him:
If ever (which all possible gods forbid) I had to meet
Murdoch there are two questions I would ask him:
1) Was it pure greed that made you renounce your
Australian citizenship?
If ever (which all possible gods forbid) I had to meet
Murdoch there are two questions I would ask him:
1) Was it pure greed that made you renounce your
Australian citizenship?
2) Did you lose all respect for truth gradually, or did
you never have any?
If ever (which all possible gods forbid) I had to meet
Murdoch there are two questions I would ask him:
1) Was it pure greed that made you renounce your
Australian citizenship?
2) Did you lose all respect for truth gradually, or did
you never have any?
I think the second question is the more important.
Our own discipline is founded on respect for truth,
so in any case you can have no meeting of
minds.
In 1994, the playwright Dennis Potter
revealed that he had named the cancer
that was about to kill him "Rupert", after
Rupert Murdoch.
Dennis Potter - Playwright
Potter felt Murdoch had diseased the
British body politic in the same way his
cancer had diseased him.
"I would shoot the bugger if I could,"
he said, drawing on a cigarette and
sipping at a morphine cocktail.
And of course…
And of course…
Potter felt Murdoch had diseased the
British body politic in the same way his
cancer had diseased him.
"I would shoot the bugger if I could,"
he said, drawing on a cigarette and
sipping at a morphine cocktail.
In an interview with Melvyn Bragg in
1994, the playwright Dennis Potter
revealed that he had named the cancer
that was about to kill him "Rupert", after
Rupert Murdoch. Potter felt Murdoch
had diseased the British body politic in
the same way his cancer had diseased
him. "I would shoot the bugger if I
could," he said, drawing on a cigarette
and sipping at a morphine cocktail.
Dear Professor Kroto,
We hope this e-mail finds you well. As you know, this year, Mr.
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News
Corporation, will be participating at the STS forum.
Mr. Murdoch would like to organize a small gathering to
exchange views with a few eminent scientists.
The small meeting (five to six people) would take place
Saturday, October 3, 2009, from 17:15 to 18:00 at the
restaurant “Beaux Séjours”, on the 1st floor (Ground Floor) of
the Grand Prince Hotel Kyoto.
We very much look forward to hearing from you about your
availability,
Sincerely yours,
For Koji Omi,
Founder and Chairman of the STS forum
In an interview with Melvyn Bragg in 1994, the
playwright Dennis Potter revealed that he had
named the cancer that was about to kill him
"Rupert", after Rupert Murdoch. Potter felt Murdoch
had diseased the British body politic in the same
way his cancer had diseased him. "I would shoot the
bugger if I could," he said, drawing on a cigarette
and sipping at a morphine cocktail.
In an interview with Melvyn Bragg in 1994, the playwright Dennis Potter revealed that he had named the cancer that was about
to kill him "Rupert", after Rupert Murdoch. Potter felt Murdoch had diseased the British body politic in the same way his cancer
had diseased him. "I would shoot the bugger if I could," he said, drawing on a cigarette and sipping at a morphine cocktail. The
novelist John Lanchester has described Murdoch as "not so much a man, or a cultural force, as a portrait of the modern world".
And in a famous guest appearance on The Simpsons, the cartoon figure of Murdoch described himself simply as "billionaire
tyrant, Rupert Murdoch". But all these descriptions notwithstanding, Murdoch is also merely a man. And – in his own way – a
family man.
Aged almost 80 and noticeably frail, Murdoch referred to himself in his recent Margaret Thatcher lecture, at Lancaster House in
London, as "something of a parvenu". This is not altogether accurate. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a parvenu is
"a person of obscure origin who has attained wealth or position beyond that of his class". Murdoch's father, Sir Keith Murdoch,
was an Australian newspaper magnate. His mother, Elisabeth, was made a dame. Murdoch University in Western Australia is
named after Murdoch's great-uncle, Walter.
Murdoch was raised by nannies in a large country house and educated at Geelong grammar, which is not a grammar school in
the English sense but an elite independent school whose alumni include various politicians, heads of state, and Prince Charles.
After Geelong, Murdoch went to study PPE at Oxford. At 22, he inherited his father's business and he now seems to own
virtually everything, or a bit of virtually everything, including the Sun, the News of the World, the Times, the Sunday Times,
HarperCollins publishers, Sky, Fox News and 20th Century Fox. Parvenu? He's a second-generation multimillionaire.
Murdoch's chippiness some might put down to colonial cringe. In his book Murdoch: Ringmaster of the Information Circus
(1992), William Shawcross puts it down to Puritanism and the influence of Murdoch's grandfather, the Very Reverend Patrick
John Murdoch. "From his Scots Free Church ancestors, he seems to have inherited a deep and abiding distaste for the English
establishment and its traditions."
There have been many books written about Murdoch and his empire – what is in effect the biggest family business the world
has ever known. Neil Chenoweth's Virtual Murdoch (2001) is recommended for readers who enjoy details of offshore trusts and
investments. Bruce Page's The Murdoch Archipelago (2003) is more of a traditional muck-rake. And Michael Wolff's The Man
Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch (revised, 2010) is intimate, racy and up-to-date. But they all
tell essentially the same story – a tale of a ruthless wheeler-dealer.
The real question now, however, is not how Murdoch established his business dynasty, but what happens to it next. Murdoch
has six children, born to three women. Prudence, Murdoch's eldest daughter, born to his first wife, Patricia Booker, is described
uncharitably by Wolff as "the official family wing nut". She is the only one among Murdoch's adult children not directly involved
in the media business. Murdoch's three children with his second wife, Anna Torv, have all been involved in News Corp.
Elisabeth is married to Matthew Freud, Sigmund's great-grandson, and currently runs her own independent TV company.
Lachlan resigned from News Corp in 2005 and now runs his own mini media empire. James is the current chairman and
CEO of News Corp, Europe and Asia. And then there are Murdoch's two young children, born to his third wife, Wendi Deng.
The dynasty is assured. The nature of the succession remains to be seen
Kappa I
James Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC
News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant"
BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK. The
chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times
and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the
media "with relish". "The expansion of state-sponsored
journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news
provision," he told the Edinburgh Television Festival.
The scope of the BBC's activities and ambitions was "chilling",
he added. Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence
fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other
broadcasters to survive, he argued. 'Chilling'
"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations
might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and
growing."
” … The Times story about how the Murdoch
organization systematically hacked into the
voicemail messages of just about anybody who is
anybody in London—a story that few UK news
outlets, save for the Guardian, have touched, and
that Scotland Yard has been loath to pursue—is a
rousing whodunit with many smoking guns.
James Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC
News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant"
BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK. The
chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times
and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the
media "with relish". "The expansion of state-sponsored
journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news
provision," he told the Edinburgh Television Festival.
The scope of the BBC's activities and ambitions was "chilling",
he added. Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence
fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other
broadcasters to survive, he argued. 'Chilling'
"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations
might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and
growing."
News Corp. owns the Fox News Channel, The Wall
Street Journal, New York Post, the Fox Business
Network and more than two dozen local television
stations, many with news programs.
Fox News Gives Juan Williams $2 Million Contract
by David Folkenflik
NPR is facing sharp criticism for terminating the contract of news
analyst Juan Williams.
Williams was fired Wednesday for violating NPR's ethics policy
over comments he made on Fox News about Muslims.
The cable news channel assailed NPR for much of the evening
while leading Republicans called for the U.S. Congress to cut off
federal funding for NPR News. One of the first was former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, himself a paid Fox commentator.
"It is an act of total censorship," Gingrich said. "I think that the
U.S. Congress should investigate NPR and consider cutting off
their money."
Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin — themselves possible
Republican presidential candidates with similar ties to Fox —
chimed in with the same call, as did others in more of a position
to do so, such as South Carolina Sen. Jim Demint and Ohio
Rep. John Boehner.
Two days after Juan Williams was fired from his job as an NPR analyst over making controversial
comments about Muslims on Fox News, conservatives are leaping to Williams' defense, and demanding
that NPR not get any more public funding.
And two of those conservatives – Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee – just happen to be two of Williams'
newest colleagues.
"NPR should receive NO fed tax dollars if it operates as intolerant, private radio. Mr. President, what say
you?" Palin said in a series of tweets about the issue on Friday.
Huckabee called on Congress to stop funding the station.
"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all
and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left,"
Huckabee said on his political action committee's website.
After Williams was booted from his job earlier this week over comments he made on Fox's "The O'Reilly
Factor" about his fear of flying with Muslims, the network offered him a 3-year, nearly $2 million deal.
Huckabee, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, currently hosts a Fox News talk show. Palin is a
political contributor on the network as well.
"Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot," Williams told O'Reilly. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see
people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as
Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
NPR issued a statement saying the remarks were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices,
and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."
But it's not just Williams' new comrades who are outraged. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint said on Friday that
he'd introduce legislation to halt NPR's funding.
"Once again we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree," DeMint
said in a statement. "The incident with Mr. Williams shows that NPR is not concerned about providing the
listening public with an honest debate of today's issues, but rather with promoting a one-sided liberal
agenda."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/22/2010-1022_sarah_palin_and_mike_huckabee_defend_juan_williams_after_npr_firing_call_to_slas.html#ixzz13a1Z
xPUC
Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC
News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant"
BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.
The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the
Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating
the media "with relish".
"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the
plurality and independence of news provision," he told the
Edinburgh Television Festival.
The scope of the BBC's activities and ambitions was "chilling",
he added.
Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well
as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters
to survive, he argued.
'Chilling'
"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations
might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and
growing."
Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC
News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant"
BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.
The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the
Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating
the media "with relish".
"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the
plurality and independence of news provision," he told the
Edinburgh Television Festival.
The scope of the BBC's activities and ambitions was "chilling",
he added.
Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well
as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters
to survive, he argued.
'Chilling'
"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations
might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and
growing."
The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky, and not one
to be ignored
Sir Michael Lyons, BBC Trust
News Corporation, which is the largest shareholder in BSkyB,
lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his
father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been
"the most difficult in recent history".
Other media organisations are also struggling as advertising
revenues have dropped during the downturn.
Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told the BBC's
World Tonight that Mr Murdoch had underplayed the
importance of Sky as a competitor.
"Sky continues to grow and get stronger and stronger all the
time so this is not quite a set of minnows and a great big BBC,"
Sir Michael said.
"The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky, and not one to
be ignored."
Free news
Mr Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC
made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organisations to
ask people to pay for their news.
"It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism
that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value
it," he said.
News Corporation has said it will start charging online
customers for news content across all its websites.
Former BBC director general Greg Dyke said Mr Murdoch's
argument that the BBC was a "threat" to independent
journalism was "fundamentally wrong".
He told BBC Radio 5 live: "Journalism is going through a very
difficult time - not only in this country but every country in the
world - because newspapers, radio and television in the
commercial world are all having a very rough time."
He said declining advertising revenues in the recession, rather
than the corporation, were to blame for the problems facing the
commercial media.
"That is nothing to do with the BBC, that is just to with what's
happening," he said.
News Corporation owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun
newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the
New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.
Rupert Murdoch addressed the same festival 20 years ago,
and was also critical of the UK's media policy.
With its commercial rivals buffeted by a falling economy and
the political cycle turning ever more hostile, the BBC was
always going to be an easy target this year. So, if nothing else,
James Murdoch's timing in accepting the invitation to give a
landmark speech at this year's MediaGuardian Edinburgh
International TV festival after years of rejections cannot be
faulted.
Which is perhaps why his attack on the "chilling" hold the
corporation has over the media landscape struck a chord with
parts of the beleaguered industry, though his speech was
described as "predictable" and "full of holes" by some. Despite
a controversial last line extolling the primacy of profit, his
comments about the size and scope of the BBC and the
mission creep of regulators were received with a surprising
amount of agreement. Even David Liddiment, a former director
of the ITV network and now a BBC trustee, while disagreeing
with the Murdoch line on the BBC, conceded that there is some
common ground between the man who chairs the pay-TV giant
Sky and the rest of the industry, which, he said, is facing
"significant challenges exacerbated by current economic
problems".
It was left to the actor Dominic West, picking up an award for
the much-feted US drama The Wire, to speak out "in contempt
of the Murdoch doctrine".
20 years ago today
It was all so different 20 years ago, when Rupert Murdoch
delivered his own landmark MacTaggart lecture. The audience
in 1989 greeted it with polite applause that could not disguise a
deep-seated antipathy towards a man who dismissed public
service broadcasting as "no more than the parading of the
prejudices and interests of the like-minded people who
currently control British television".
Yet with this speech now seen as a prediction of today's
multichannel world, some in the audience were left wondering
whether his son's desire for a "far, far smaller" corporation
could prove similarly prescient - and whether his speech,
delivered with evangelical fervour, would mark the moment
when the BBC's power began to wane.
urdoch started his attack on the BBC by admitting he felt like "a
crazy relative" calling the British TV industry "the Addams
family of world media". For many of
urdoch started his attack on the BBC by admitting he felt like "a
crazy relative" calling the British TV industry "the Addams
family of world media". For many of those present, however,
the BBC's dominance has been of huge concern for much of
the past year.
Many delegates described Murdoch's attack - on what Peter
Bazalgette, the former creative director of Endemol, called the
"twin terrors" of Ofcom and the BBC - as predictable, even if
they enjoyed the colourful, headline-grabbing language. His
accusation of "Orwellian" state control and assertion that the
British broadcasting system, with a powerful BBC at its heart, is
"authoritarian" in nature, could have come from the mouth of
his father. The Murdochs share a belief that private enterprise
should be allowed to go about its business unfettered by
regulation, although James's philosophical approach is stripped
of the class-bound rhetoric of his Australian-born father. "James
is coming from a very particular place," said Peter Fincham,
director of television at ITV, who used his own MacTaggart
lecture last year to criticise Ofcom. Murdoch's faith in the power
of the market seems to have been transplanted, wholesale,
from an upbringing in the upper echelons of wealthy east-coast
Channel Five's chief executive, Dawn Airey, who reported
directly to James Murdoch when she ran Sky Networks, said
he was right to claim that Ofcom is too proactive. "I agree with
him on this part. We are over-regulated by Ofcom." However,
she was disappointed "he didn't offer a solution, or draw on his
international experience, as he did in his previous speech here"
- in the 2000 Alternative MacTaggart lecture.
Some said that the fact that Murdoch failed to set out a vision
for how the industry could be regulated, choosing instead to
argue that it should not be regulated at all, undermined the
potency of his attack. Channel 4's chief executive, Andy
Duncan - soon to step down, it emerged at the weekend - said
that while many concurred with his comments about an
expanding BBC and regulator, Murdoch had missed the
essential characteristics of the British broadcasting mix. "There
is something good in this system," he said. "We have the best
of the market, and the BBC and Channel 4 as interventions."
Duncan brushed off Murdoch's criticism of C4, which he
described as an "unaccountable institution", alongside the BBC
Trust and Ofcom, saying, "It's not really about us."
Financially neutered
There were many supporters of the BBC. Few of the struggling independent producers who make up the majority of the festival audience would welcome the
prospect of it being financially neutered at a time when the commercial sector is cutting budgets. One leading indie producer who deals with the BBC said,
however, that Murdoch's conviction that the corporation should be placed on rations was correct. "In the BBC the system is geared to building fiefdoms and
departments, even now when they are apparently being squeezed. It operates completely differently to any commercial company I have known. The aim of
the executives [is] to increase their scope and headcount all the time.
"They are not focused on more tangible and measurable goals, such as profits," he said. Nothing happened, he added, "when they were found to have
overspent by a huge amount a year ago, a sackable offence in a commercial company."
When bleary-eyed delegates filed in to watch Murdoch being quizzed about his speech on Saturday morning, the atmosphere was one of surprising sympathy
rather than hostility. Asked if the industry was over-regulated, a majority raised their hands to indicate they agreed with Murdoch's view.
Murdoch's opinion that we now occupy an "all media market", in which the distinction between television, newspapers and radio is being blurred, gained
traction from unlikely figures such as Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, who had a table-thumping disagreement with the News Corp boss over the
value of public service broadcasting. In this new world, the current regulatory regime may become moribund as newspapers march in to territory once
occupied solely by broadcasters.
The BBC news website, argued Murdoch, is preventing commercial news organisations from investing in news, with potentially dire consequences for society
and democracy. "The [BBC] news operation is creating enormous problems for the independent news business and it has to be dealt with," he said. "The
BBC should not be in the business of competing with professional journalists. The consequences [for] independent journalists is probably the most urgent one
to deal with." News International's papers are struggling to make money from their websites and Murdoch is considering introducing charges. But that's
difficult when the BBC provides online news and other services free.
There was even more widespread agreement with Murdoch's attack on Ofcom. David Cameron declared recently that a future Conservative government
would cut Ofcom down to size by stripping it of its policy-making functions. BSkyB is at loggerheads with the unloved regulator over its long-running inquiry
into pay-TV, a fact Murdoch failed to acknowledge in his speech. Ofcom said in June that it wants to force the company to sell its "premium content",
including sport and films, to competitors such as BT and Virgin Media, for up to a third less than Sky currently charges. No wonder Murdoch aimed some of
his most acerbic rhetorical flourishes at it, describing the burden it places on Sky as "astonishing".
Senior Ofcom sources recognised that the ferocity of Murdoch's attack, coupled with a Tory government headed by a man who used to work for Carlton,
could amount to a direct challenge to its authority. Yet what sounds like a threat to Ofcom's continued existence today, they argue, may be viewed as political
posturing tomorrow. They point out that a Cameron government could have far more pressing problems to solve before it turns its attention to media
regulation. Industry sources also play down talk of ideological collusion between the Tories and the Murdochs, despite the close links between the party and
the News Corp empire. Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who is now Cameron's director of communications, is said to have a low opinion of
the BBC, but there are few votes to be won by talking openly about privatising the corporation, despite public disquiet about the amount it pays its stars.
Murdoch's handlers were relieved that he kept his cool at the Q&A session on Saturday morning, although he did offer fleeting glimpses of the temper that
lingers beneath his polished public persona. The suggestion that the BBC is not run by the state, he said irritably, is nonsense. "It is a public institution owned
by the taxpayer." The current system has resulted in "unaccountable self-perpetuating growth over generations".
On his way out of the Edinburgh conference centre, en route to his private jet, Murdoch was asked how he thought his speech had been received. "I dunno,"
he replied, "but I got out alive."
Far from leaving his audience baying for blood, Murdoch's attacks found surprising sympathy, and left parts of the industry wondering whether they would
survive.
With its commercial rivals buffeted by a falling economy and the political cycle turning ever more hostile, the BBC was always going to be an easy target this
year. So, if nothing else, James Murdoch's timing in accepting the invitation to give a landmark speech at this year's MediaGuardian Edinburgh International
TV festival after years of rejections cannot be faulted.
Which is perhaps why his attack on the "chilling" hold the corporation has over the media landscape struck a chord with parts of the beleaguered industry,
though his speech was described as "predictable" and "full of holes" by some. Despite a controversial last line extolling the primacy of profit, his comments
about the size and scope of the BBC and the mission creep of regulators were received with a surprising amount of agreement. Even David Liddiment, a
former director of the ITV network and now a BBC trustee, while disagreeing with the Murdoch line on the BBC, conceded that there is some common ground
between the man who chairs the pay-TV giant Sky and the rest of the industry, which, he said, is facing "significant challenges exacerbated by current
economic problems". It was left to the actor Dominic West, picking up an award for the much-feted US drama The Wire, to speak out "in contempt of the
Murdoch doctrine".
20 years ago today
It was all so different 20 years ago, when Rupert Murdoch delivered his own landmark MacTaggart lecture. The audience in 1989 greeted it with polite
applause that could not disguise a deep-seated antipathy towards a man who dismissed public service broadcasting as "no more than the parading of the
prejudices and interests of the like-minded people who currently control British television".
Yet with this speech now seen as a prediction of today's multichannel world, some in the audience were left wondering whether his son's desire for a "far, far
smaller" corporation could prove similarly prescient - and whether his speech, delivered with evangelical fervour, would mark the moment when the BBC's
power began to wane.
Murdoch started his attack on the BBC by admitting he felt like "a crazy relative" calling the British TV industry "the Addams family of world media". For many
of those present, however, the BBC's dominance has been of huge concern for much of the past year.
Many delegates described Murdoch's attack - on what Peter Bazalgette, the former creative director of Endemol, called the "twin terrors" of Ofcom and the
BBC - as predictable, even if they enjoyed the colourful, headline-grabbing language. His accusation of "Orwellian" state control and assertion that the British
broadcasting system, with a powerful BBC at its heart, is "authoritarian" in nature, could have come from the mouth of his father. The Murdochs share a belief
that private enterprise should be allowed to go about its business unfettered by regulation, although James's philosophical approach is stripped of the classbound rhetoric of his Australian-born father. "James is coming from a very particular place," said Peter Fincham, director of television at ITV, who used his
own MacTaggart lecture last year to criticise Ofcom. Murdoch's faith in the power of the market seems to have been transplanted, wholesale, from an
upbringing in the upper echelons of wealthy east-coast America and business school orthodoxy.
Channel Five's chief executive, Dawn Airey, who reported directly to James Murdoch when she ran Sky Networks, said he was right to claim that Ofcom is too
proactive. "I agree with him on this part. We are over-regulated by Ofcom." However, she was disappointed "he didn't offer a solution, or draw on his
international experience, as he did in his previous speech here" - in the 2000 Alternative MacTaggart lecture.
Some said that the fact that Murdoch failed to set out a vision for how the industry could be regulated, choosing instead to argue that it should not be
regulated at all, undermined the potency of his attack. Channel 4's chief executive, Andy Duncan - soon to step down, it emerged at the weekend - said that
while many concurred with his comments about an expanding BBC and regulator, Murdoch had missed the essential characteristics of the British
broadcasting mix. "There is something good in this system," he said. "We have the best of the market, and the BBC and Channel 4 as interventions." Duncan
brushed off Murdoch's criticism of C4, which he described as an "unaccountable institution", alongside the BBC Trust and Ofcom, saying, "It's not really about
us."
Financially neutered
There were many supporters of the BBC. Few of the struggling independent producers who make up the majority of the festival audience would welcome the
prospect of it being financially neutered at a time when the commercial sector is cutting budgets. One leading indie producer who deals with the BBC said,
however, that Murdoch's conviction that the corporation should be placed on rations was correct. "In the BBC the system is geared to building fiefdoms and
departments, even now when they are apparently being squeezed. It operates completely differently to any commercial company I have known. The aim of
the executives [is] to increase their scope and headcount all the time.
"They are not focused on more tangible and measurable goals, such as profits," he said. Nothing happened, he added, "when they were found to have
overspent by a huge amount a year ago, a sackable offence in a commercial company."
When bleary-eyed delegates filed in to watch Murdoch being quizzed about his speech on Saturday morning, the atmosphere was one of surprising sympathy
rather than hostility. Asked if the industry was over-regulated, a majority raised their hands to indicate they agreed with Murdoch's view.
Murdoch's opinion that we now occupy an "all media market", in which the distinction between television, newspapers and radio is being blurred, gained
traction from unlikely figures such as Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, who had a table-thumping disagreement with the News Corp boss over the
value of public service broadcasting. In this new world, the current regulatory regime may become moribund as newspapers march in to territory once
occupied solely by broadcasters.
The BBC news website, argued Murdoch, is preventing commercial news organisations from investing in news, with potentially dire consequences for society
and democracy. "The [BBC] news operation is creating enormous problems for the independent news business and it has to be dealt with," he said. "The
BBC should not be in the business of competing with professional journalists. The consequences [for] independent journalists is probably the most urgent one
James Murdoch, the chief executive of BSkyBm, with David Cameron. The Conservative party leader has been accused of bending its broadcasting policy to suit
the satellite broadcaster's interests. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA Archive/Press Association Ima When, last September, yet another Gordon Brown fightback
was deflated by the Sun, announcing it had switched its political support to David Cameron, Labour's reaction careered quickly from depression to fury. Lord
Mandelson, the business secretary who spent a career courting the Rupert Murdoch-owned media – with landmark results, from the Sun, for Tony Blair –
accused the Conservatives of having made "a contract" with News International, bestowing policy promises in return for the Sun's backing.
Chief among these, according to Labour, was Cameron's threat, if elected, to burn, in a "bonfire of quangos", Ofcom, which is conducting the review of pay
television vehemently opposed by the substantially Murdoch-owned BSkyB. Cameron made his speech on 6 July, just 10 days after Ofcom proposed forcing Sky
to make its premium movies and Premier League football available to other suppliers at a reduced price. That, Ofcom argues, would be good for consumers but
BSkyB insists it will seriously damage its business.
Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, has emphatically denied that any deal has been done. He emphasised that Cameron was suggesting stripping
Ofcom of a policy-making role, but continuing to allow it to regulate broadcasting.
Labour's very accusation, though, illustrated the huge commercial power, translating surely into political influence, that has been built from a pastime as
homespun as watching football on television. Back in 1991, before Sky captured the rights to the breakaway Premier League's live matches, BSkyB had been
losing £10m a week and was in danger of dragging Murdoch's whole News International empire into insolvency.
Sky's Australian executives had grown to realise that in England football was the only television watched by viewers – fans – loyal or addicted enough to be
willing to pay for it. BSkyB's huge investment back then, £191m over five years for the exclusive live rights, yielded immediately increased subscribers and
turnover. The figures look quaint now: in the year to 30 June, BSkyB, almost floored with debts, turned over £233m and made a £20m operating loss. The
following year, with one Premier League season completed, turnover had soared to £380m and the company made an operating profit, of £62m.
Labour, then in opposition, cried foul at the sale of English top flight football exclusively to pay television for the first time. Sixty-seven Labour MPs signed a
House of Commons motion to condemn this restricted access to watching football, and the then party leader, Neil Kinnock, promised to curtail, as regulators had
recommended, Murdoch's ownership of The Sun, Times, Sunday Times and News of the World, as well as BSkyB.
Only a month later, The Sun carried its light bulb lampoon of Kinnock and, when Labour lost the election, crowed: "It was The Sun wot won it."
The Labour Party's collective memory is haunted by that, and Mandelson and Tony Blair dedicated themselves to eliminating anti-Murdoch sentiment and to New
Labour winning the empire over. They counted it as victory when the tabloid ran its "The Sun Backs Blair" headline in 1997. No regulatory moves were
threatened or made against News International, and in fact the government strongly backed the status quo when Sky's exclusivity over Premier League matches
was serially challenged by the European Commission.
Sky's growth since has been enormous – due to investment and quality coverage the company says, but, crucially, because no Premier League match has ever
been shown live, in nearly 18 years, except on pay TV. Last year, the 20th since Sky was established, the company made £5.4bn, and recorded an £813m
operating profit. The Premier League has grown into the world's richest football competition largely on the foundation of fans' annual subscriptions to Sky.
That is a partnership BSkyB and the Premier League fight bloodily to protect, as they are doing now, against the price reduction Ofcom wants in order to lower
the cost for viewers. BSkyB and the England and Wales Cricket Board also fiercely oppose the recommendation by David Davies' "Crown Jewels" review panel
that Ashes cricket should be shown free to air.
Mandelson, and the Labour culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, have argued it was all too neat: Ofcom launched its review, Cameron, advised by the former
Murdoch-owned News of the World editor Andy Coulson, announced a "bonfire of the quangos" with Ofcom specifically named, then the Sun proclaimed:
"Labour's Lost It." The Conservatives say there are no deals, and Ofcom will remain a regulator if they win the election – although the Tories appear to have
decided the Ashes can stay with Sky.
Whatever the truths about backstage deals, it all demonstrates the significance of televised sport in Britain, grown spectacularly lucrative for a media company
left untouched by 13 years of Labour, which believes it retains the power, still, to make or break a government.
Has Cameron done a deal with Murdoch?
By Andy McSmith
12 November 2009
David Cameron has been accused of making
a "contract" with Britain's biggest media
company to trade political support before an
election for government favours afterwards if
the Tories win.
They suspect that the Conservative Party
has been tailoring its policies on media
regulation and the BBC to suit the
commercial interests of News International,
which owns The Sun, and that the paper's
aggressive support for the Tories is a pay-off
that could spread to other parts of the mass
media.
A Cameron-Murdoch alliance could devastate
the BBC
Posted by George Eaton - 01 September 2009
14:56
Many Conservatives sympathise with James
Murdoch's attack on the BBC as a state behemoth
Does the BBC have much to fear following James
Murdoch's turn as Gordon Gekko at the Edinburgh
International Television Festival?
In previous years the rhetorical excesses of his
MacTaggart Lecture, which invoked George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four to damn the BBC, could have
been playfully batted away by the corporation's
executives.
But this year, with a Tory party increasingly
sceptical of the BBC's size and scale on the
brink of power, the corporation faces the
threat of a powerful alliance between
Cameron's Conservatives and Murdoch's
News Corporation.
August 18, 2010
News Corp.'s $1 million contribution to the
Republican Governors Association earlier this year
would be a notable gift from any company — but
Rupert Murdoch's media empire is hardly just any
company.
to banks in the Virgin Islands
and Bermuda faster than its
hacks
can
denounce
scroungers who fiddle the
dole.
A Cameron-Murdoch alliance could devastate
the BBC
Posted by George Eaton - 01 September 2009
14:56
Many Conservatives sympathise with James
Murdoch's attack on the BBC as a state behemoth
Does the BBC have much to fear following James
Murdoch's turn as Gordon Gekko at the Edinburgh
International Television Festival?
In previous years the rhetorical excesses of his
MacTaggart Lecture, which invoked George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four to damn the BBC, could have
been playfully batted away by the corporation's
executives.
But this year, with a Tory party increasingly sceptical
of the BBC's size and scale on the brink of power,
the corporation faces the threat of a powerful
alliance between Cameron's Conservatives and
Has Cameron done a deal with Murdoch?
Lord Mandelson's attack shines spotlight on Tory leader's links with
media mogul
By Andy McSmith
Thursday, 12 November 2009
David Cameron has been accused of making a "contract" with
Britain's biggest media company to trade political support before an
election for government favours afterwards if the Tories win.
The accusation was levelled yesterday by the Business Secretary
Peter Mandelson, who is increasingly the public face of Gordon
Brown's government. Ministers are angry at the campaign that The
Sun has run against the Prime Minister all this week over the spelling
mistakes in a letter Mr Brown sent to the mother of a young soldier
killed in Afghanistan.
They suspect that the Conservative Party has been tailoring its
policies on media regulation and the BBC to suit the commercial
interests of News International, which owns The Sun, and that the
paper's aggressive support for the Tories is a pay-off that could
spread to other parts of the mass media.
Cameron, Murdoch and a Greek island freebie
Media tycoon's son-in-law paid for Conservative leader's flights for
meeting on yacht in Santorini
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Friday, 24 October 2008
Share
Print
Email
REX FEATURES
Rupert Murdoch's yacht Rosehearty in Cote D'Azur, France, last year
enlarge
David Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks with Rupert
Murdoch on his luxury yacht off a Greek island this summer, The
Independent can reveal.
How Cameron cosied up to Murdoch & Son
The Sun's decision to turn against Labour was the reward for
years of shrewd politicking and social networking by the Tory
leader and his team. Andy McSmith reports
Thursday, 1 October 2009
David Cameron now has a political asset that has eluded
Conservative leaders for 12 years did not come from nowhere. It
was the product of months of networking, negotiating, wine
drinking, canape quaffing, villa visiting and yacht boarding as the
Conservative Party and Britain's biggest media company learned
to love and understand each other once again.
Yesterday, one of the happiest men in the country was Andy
Coulson, David Cameron's highly paid and much criticised
communications director, for whom the front page of yesterday's
Sun was the culmination of months of delicate diplomacy.
Cameron's master stroke, in June 2007, was to hire Coulson five
months after he had lost his job as editor of the Murdoch-owned
News of the World when it emerged that the paper had been
bugging royal telephones. It was a controversial appointment that
opened Cameron to political attack and is costing the Tory party a
hefty salary – reputedly £200,000 a year. But it produced
dividends, because it meant that the Tory leader had at his side
someone he trusted absolutely, who was also trusted inside the
social world of the Murdoch clan.
How Cameron cosied up to Murdoch & Son
The Sun's decision to turn against Labour was the reward for years of shrewd politicking and social networking by
the Tory leader and his team. Andy McSmith reports
Thursday, 1 October 2009
It was about 10 minutes to 10 on Tuesday night that mobile phones across Brighton started bleeping. They
belonged to the members of the Cabinet and caused many to abandon their dinners and hunch overtheir
Blackberrys, urgently discussing what to do next.
Britain's brashest and biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, which likes to sometimes make news rather than merely
report it, was at it again. After 12 years of supporting the Labour Party, The Sun was filling its front page the next
morning with the headline "Labour's lost it".
As the news spread like bushfire around the sealed-off part of Brighton where Labour is holding its annual
conference, the doors opened on a suite in the Grand Hotel where News International, which owns The Sun, was
holding a party.
Search the news archive for more stories
Gordon Brown, who was expected to attend, immediately cancelled his appearance, as did Peter Mandelson, now
his First Secretary, but who in a previous life played a central role in the negotiations between Tony Blair and the
Murdoch empire in the 1990s which led to The Sun's backing of Labour in 1997. He knows News International's
chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, well, and vented his fury in a telephone conversation with her.
Yesterday, Mandelson's people claimed he told her that she and her colleagues were "chumps". Her version of the
same conversation had Mandelson using a noun that sounds similar, but is great deal more vulgar.
But while it was a shock to the Labour faithful, the news that David Cameron now has a political asset that has
eluded Conservative leaders for 12 years did not come from nowhere. It was the product of months of networking,
negotiating, wine drinking, canape quaffing, villa visiting and yacht boarding as the Conservative Party and
Britain's biggest media company learned to love and understand each other once again.
Yesterday, one of the happiest men in the country was Andy Coulson, David Cameron's highly paid and much
criticised communications director, for whom the front page of yesterday's Sun was the culmination of months of
delicate diplomacy.
Four years ago, when David Cameron did not have an experienced tabloid operator like Coulson to advise him, it
nearly went horribly wrong. When the raw and newly elected Tory leader first met News International's patriarch
Rupert Murdoch, he was intent on projecting himself as a socially tolerant leader with modern ideas who would
shake up an outdated Tory Party. In his anxiety to be modern, Cameron described with great enthusiasm how he
had enjoyed the new US blockbuster film Brokeback Mountain. Far from being impressed, the ageing Murdoch
was appalled that a would-be prime minister should be watching a film containing graphic scenes of gay sex.
In those days, Murdoch had more time for John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons committee on
culture and media, who had worked for Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street, than for anyone in Cameron's
shadow cabinet. He also thought that the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, was more of a Thatcherite than
Cameron.
Cameron's master stroke, in June 2007, was to hire Coulson five months after he had lost his job as editor of the
Murdoch-owned News of the World when it emerged that the paper had been bugging royal telephones. It was a
controversial appointment that opened Cameron to political attack and is costing the Tory party a hefty salary –
reputedly £200,000 a year. But it produced dividends, because it meant that the Tory leader had at his side
someone he trusted absolutely, who was also trusted inside the social world of the Murdoch clan.
Coulson is a dear friend of Rebekah Brooks, formerly Rebekah Wade, who edited The Sun from 2003 until she
stepped up into her post earlier this year. When Wade was arrested in 2005 for allegedly assaulting her then
husband, the actor Ross Kemp, it was to Coulson she first turned for help. It is said that each would die for the
other.
This link gave Cameron a secure line into the social circle that includes James Murdoch, his sister Elisabeth, her
husband the publicist MatthewFreud, Wade's second husband, the old Etonian former racehorse trainer, Charlie
Brooks, and Nat Rothschild, of the banking family.
Rothschild, son of Jacob, the fourth Baron Rothschild, is an exact contemporary of David Cameron's most
important political ally, George Osborne. As young boys, they were in the same year at a private preparatory
school. They met again at Oxford University, where they were members of the elite Bullingdon Club.
In summer 2008, David Cameron and his wife were flown in Matthew Freud's private plane to meet Rupert
Murdoch in his yacht, Rosehearty, off a Greek island. Afterwards, Cameron was flown to Turkey for a family
holiday, and Murdoch went on to Corfu for his daughter's 40th birthday.
Osborne was already in Corfu, on a family holiday that acquired notoriety because Peter Mandelson was also in
the area, and what was said in private aboard a yacht owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska blew up into
a political row after they returned to the UK.
The Osborne family was holidaying in a villa owned by Nat Rothschild, in an area of northern Corfu which is so
This link gave Cameron a secure line into the social circle that
includes James Murdoch, his sister Elisabeth, her husband the
publicist MatthewFreud, Wade's second husband, the old
Etonian former racehorse trainer, Charlie Brooks, and Nat
Rothschild, of the banking family.
Rothschild, son of Jacob, the fourth Baron Rothschild, is an
exact contemporary of David Cameron's most important political
ally, George Osborne. As young boys, they were in the same
year at a private preparatory school. They met again at Oxford
University, where they were members of the elite Bullingdon
Club.
In summer 2008, David Cameron and his wife were flown in
Matthew Freud's private plane to meet Rupert Murdoch in his
yacht, Rosehearty, off a Greek island. Afterwards, Cameron was
flown to Turkey for a family holiday, and Murdoch went on to
Corfu for his daughter's 40th birthday.
Osborne was already in Corfu, on a family holiday that acquired
notoriety because Peter Mandelson was also in the area, and
what was said in private aboard a yacht owned by the Russian
oligarch Oleg Deripaska blew up into a political row after they
returned to the UK.
The Osborne family was holidaying in a villa owned by Nat
Rothschild, in an area of northern Corfu which is so popular with
the London set that it is known as "Kensington on Sea". David
Cameron and his family had previously holidayed there in 2006.
One guest who has also stayed at the villa said: "It's an old olive
press and olive mill that Jacob Rothschild bought about 25
years ago and which Nat now has. It has been extensively
added to over the year, in a very simple way, so that it sleeps
about 20. It's stunningly beautiful and understated."
He added: "It all seems incredibly cosy. James Murdoch,
Rebekah Wade, Charlie Brooks, Matthew Freud, Elisabeth
Murdoch, Cameron and Osborne are all very much at ease with
each other.
He added: "It all seems incredibly cosy. James Murdoch, Rebekah Wade, Charlie Brooks, Matthew Freud, Elisabeth Murdoch, Cameron and Osborne are all very much at ease with each other.
There is a mix of the social and the political. It all seems incredibly close."
No one doubts that it was the Murdochs, father and son, who were behind yesterday's announcement in The Sun, rather than the paper's new editor, Dominic Mohan.
"Everybody was involved to a greater or lesser extent," one senior member of the editorial staff said. "Were Rupert and James involved? The answer to that is that they are always involved in
something as important as this. Rupert created The Sun. He's not going to just leave it to someone else. It's his baby."
But it was not all socialising – there was some politics. Executives at News International have been particularly exercised by the threat to newspapers posed by the BBC's website. Speaking at the
Edinburgh festival in August, James Murdoch, the son of News International's founder, described the BBC's reach as "chilling". He also complained about the media regulator, Ofcom. Keen to oblige,
David Cameron has promised to abolish Ofcom and scale back the BBC.
The probability now is that Murdoch's other daily newspaper, The Times, will follow its tabloid stablemate. Although Tories complain about the closeness between New Labour and some Times
political writers, the newspaper has its strong links with the Tories too. There is thought to be a job in a Cameron government and a peerage awaiting the Times chief leader writer, Danny Finkelstein,
if he chooses to take it. Finkelstein was Osborne's intellectual mentor when the two worked for the former Tory leader William Hague.
The Times editor, James Harding, fits perfectly within the Cameron social set. He and George Osborne were pupils at the same public schools, St Pauls, as teenagers. He and Cameron played
tennis together before Cameron became an MP and in 2006 they were reported to be staying together at the Rothschild villa in Corfu. Harding's fiancée, Kate, is the daughter of the financier, Sir
Mark Weinberg, Jacob Rothschild's business partner.
But all this back history did not diminish the shock felt at the Labour party conference in Brighton when news of The Sun's front page hit them. It was a shock, above all for Gordon Brown, who has
also tried hard to cultivate the Murdoch clan. In the final days of Tony Blair's premiership in 2007, during one of the farewell parties at 10 Downing Street, guests looked across to the lawn behind No
11 and saw Gordon Brown in conversation with Rupert Murdoch. When Rebekah Wade and Charlie Brooks celebrated their wedding in June, on the Brooks family estate near Chipping Norton,
Gordon Brown was there, as well as David Cameron.
But the difference is that Cameron moves smoothly through these occasions, giving the appearance of someone who is having a good time, but Brown is too obviously there out of a sense of duty.
Brown still believed that his relations with the Murdoch empire were intact on Tuesday afternoon as he was delivering his speech to the Labour Party conference, his biggest speech of the year. At
6pm, he put in a routine call to Dominic Mohan, who took over the editorship of The Sun last month.
There have been some famous conversations between Sun editors and prime ministers, including the one in which Kelvin MacKenzie told a beleaguered John Major: "John, let me put it this way. I've
got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I'm going to pour it all over your head."
But this conversation produced no fireworks. Mohan did not even tell Brown what the next day's Sun was going to do to him.
Video: Dogs day for Labour
In the cold light of morning, Labour had to assess yesterday how much it mattered that their 12-year rapprochement with The Sun was over. The last time that Labour lost a general election, in 1992,
The Sun's continuing support for the Conservatives was reckoned to be decisive, both by the defeated Labour leader Neil Kinnock and by the paper itself, which boasted in a famous headline: "It was
The Sun wot won it."
But that was in the days before the internet, when 24-hour news was in its infancy and The Sun had a formidable reputation as an opinion former. Although its executives still argue that The Sun's
eight to 10 million readers are more likely to switch party allegiancethan readers of other newspapers, they are also rather less likely to vote at all. It is estimated that barely half turned out at the last
general election.
And if opinion polls are accurate, Labour under Gordon Brown had already lost the allegiance of a large proportion of those Sun readers who will vote months before yesterday's bombshell. Perhaps
a suitable headline for today would be "It was The Sun wot followed the general drift of public opinion and joined the winning side." Not snappy, but accurate.
A question of policy: Cameron and the Murdochs
The media tycoons have much to gain from a Tory administration:
Abolish Ofcom
James Murdoch has complained that the media regulator is unaccountable, and intervenes far too much, stifling creativity (and profit). David Cameron agrees.
The Conservative leadership has been making the right noises for the Murdochs this summer. On 26 June, Ofcom announced it would force Sky to sell premium television football rights for
transmission on platforms such as BT. The next day, Sky vented its anger and said it would appeal – with the hint of further legal proceedings. On 6 July, Mr Cameron arranged an unscheduled
press conference to talk about quangos and announced that, if elected, he would abolish Ofcom.
Curb the BBC
Its income is guaranteed through the licence system, while the profitability of Sky television and the Murdoch newspapers depend on the state of the market. Mr Cameron is sympathetic.
Wreck the Lisbon Treaty
Rupert Murdoch has never liked the EU, and welcomes anything which holds up further integration. But if, as expected, the Irish vote to ratify the treaty, Mr Cameron may have to disappoint on this
one.
Back the troops in Afghanistan
The Sun accuses Labour of not doing so, but it is not obvious what the Tories would do differently. They say they might restore three disbanded infantry battalions, but have not said how to pay for it.
How Cameron cosied up to Murdoch & Son
The Sun's decision to turn against Labour was the reward for years of shrewd politicking and social networking by the Tory leader and his team. Andy
McSmith reports
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Share
Print
Email
Text Size
Normal
Large
Extra Large
GETTY IMAGES/ REUTERS
The Sun's decision to turn against Labour has been a welcome boost for David Cameron
In pictures: The politician, the media mogul, and the go-betweens
Sponsored Links
Ads by Google
Vouchers for London
Get 50 - 70% Off Every Day Online.Get the Groupon Newsletter Now!
www.GROUPON.co.uk/London
Spread Betting - Try Now
Try GFTs Award-Winning TradingPlatform. Free Practice Account.
www.GFTuk.com
The People Speak
Kingsley, McKellen & Firth TakePart in HISTORY™ - 31 Oct at 9pm.
History.co.uk
67% Forecasted Growth
Green Energy Investments.$10,000 Minimum Investment.
WorldEnergyResearch.com
It was about 10 minutes to 10 on Tuesday night that mobile phones across Brighton started bleeping. They belonged to the members of the Cabinet and
caused many to abandon their dinners and hunch overtheir Blackberrys, urgently discussing what to do next.
Britain's brashest and biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, which likes to sometimes make news rather than merely report it, was at it again. After 12 years of
supporting the Labour Party, The Sun was filling its front page the next morning with the headline "Labour's lost it".
As the news spread like bushfire around the sealed-off part of Brighton where Labour is holding its annual conference, the doors opened on a suite in the
Grand Hotel where News International, which owns The Sun, was holding a party.
Related articles
Video: Miliband looks to the future
Andrew Grice: Brown's indecision is final
Simon Carr: The last day of Labour
PM on defensive as conference ends
Miliband brands key Tory ally a former 'neo-Nazi'
Harman rallies troops with 'fight to win' call
Murdoch
His Times, Sunday Times, News of the World and
Sun are small parts of his News Corporation
conglomerate…
Between 1988 and 1999, its British division didn't
pay a penny in corporation tax, despite making
profits of £1.4 billion.
to banks in the Virgin Islands and Bermuda faster
than its hacks can denounce scroungers who fiddle
the dole.