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from John Lloyd:
A free press without total freedom
Journalism gyrates dizzily between the dolorous grind of falling revenue and the Internet’s vast opportunities of a limitless knowledge and creation engine. On the revenue front, no news is good. The just-published Pew Center’s “State of the US News Media” opens with the bleak statement that “a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public.” Not only, that is, is the trade shrinking, but those who once depended on its gatekeepers have found their own ways to visibility.
Journalists’ task, as large as any they have collectively faced in 400 years of their trade’s existence, is to find a way to continue the journalism that societies most need and citizens are least willing to pay for: detailed, skeptical, truthful, fair, investigatory writing and broadcasting. It’s a big ask. The British are in the process of not answering it. They are staging a sideshow: not an unimportant one, but in a minor key all the same.
Over the past two years, a series of alleged crimes – illegal interception of phone messages, bribery, blackmail, perverting the course of justice, theft – have been committed by journalists working for the British tabloids. The Leveson Inquiry, prompted by revelations of phone hacking, and subsequent police investigations have laid bare a shaming landscape of cruelty and criminality. Many politicians of all parties bowed before the perpetrators, adding to the shame.
Redress is planned. Over the past few days, the three main party leaders have agreed to a much stricter regime of press regulation. The political parties, sensing that the popular mood has been and may remain critical of the tabloids, have also agreed (it seems; the deal may still fall apart) to put their collective weight behind a regulator with the power to levy fines up to £1 million and to command prominent display for corrections. The tabloids, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, the most popular daily in the land, cry tyranny. That cry is most eloquently uttered by Trevor Kavanagh, the paper’s veteran political columnist, who warned on Tuesday that “once politicians seize control of that voice [a free press], whatever their promises and assurances, there is nothing to stop them gagging it altogether.”
from Jack Shafer:
The leadership lessons of Chairman Rupert
This piece originally appeared in Reuters Magazine.
Rupert Murdoch has endured more crises during his 80-plus years than Richard Nixon and Odysseus combined, so the CEO and chairman of News Corporation can be forgiven for seeming nonplussed by his current predicament. He took over the family newspaper business in Australia at 21, when his father died, and expanded it. He fought the British unions in 1986 and won. He repelled the bankers in 1990, when he was close to insolvency. He has survived two divorces, the purchase and sale of MySpace.com, a bunch of other digital disasters, and even the predations of John Malone, who threatens Murdoch family hegemony with his purchase of News Corp stock. And now, referencing his media empire’s latest fiasco, the British Parliament has deemed Murdoch “not a fit person” to run an international company.
If Murdoch were the sort of pompous captain of industry who collected leadership maxims, Look for Trouble would likely top his list. He craves competition, and has repeatedly bet his company on new ventures like 20th Century Fox, the Fox Network, NFL football and his satellite operations.
from Breakingviews:
Rupert Murdoch’s sham governance on full display
By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Rupert Murdoch still gets a kick out of the “fair and balanced” slogan used by his Fox News channel. He had a good laugh about it only last week at News Corp’s annual shareholder meeting. The results of a vote conducted at that gathering, released Monday, show that everyone’s now equally in on the joke about the company’s shameful corporate governance as they are the conservative bias of his TV news operation.
from Breakingviews:
James Murdoch stuck in limbo
By Chris Hughes
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
The challenge to James Murdoch's credibility remains serious.
Two former senior staff have repeated assertions that News Corporation's European boss was made aware, in 2008, of evidence that phone hacking at his UK newspapers involved more than just a single rogue reporter. Murdoch has strongly rejected that claim. The truth of the matter remains unclear.
from Breakingviews:
In all, News Corp’s papers could be worth $6 bln
By Quentin Webb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
LONDON -- The Sun is Britain’s biggest newspaper, outselling its two tabloid rivals combined by 50 percent. Yet it might fetch less than 500 million pounds ($800 million), were Rupert Murdoch’s embattled News Corp to sell up. Add in The Times and the Sunday Times, and a deal might be struck for 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion). His entire newspaper empire, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and nearly 150 Australian titles, may be worth between $3 and 6 billion. The industry’s terrible economics, and the UK hacking scandal, both discourage M&A. But trophy buyers could emerge.
from Felix Salmon:
A few Murdoch questions
After taking phone calls about Rupert Murdoch on Brian Lehrer's show this morning and then immediately doing an hour-long diavlog with Alex Massie on the subject, I'm beginning to get a little Murdoch-ed out. But there are three newish points that are worth raising.
Firstly, what was the mechanism by which it was agreed that Rupert and James Murdoch would appear in parliament together? Having James by his side was a godsend for Rupert, and James clearly took his role as a shield for his father very seriously. I'm sure the more aggressive MPs would have preferred to be able to grill Rupert on his own, as they did Rebekah Brooks. How did that not happen?
Constitution in crisis as tyrannical journalists devour cowed politicians
A sordid tale of excess and brutality, of a world dominated by journalists with their ears to the keyhole, of tyrannical newspapers wielding remarkable power and of a political class not only cowed, but consumed, by that power.
Sound familiar? With two of Britain’s most senior policemen out of a job, the prime minister under pressure for his serenading of News Corp and one of the world’s most powerful press barons, in the form of Rupert Murdoch, summoned to testify to parliament, it would be one way of describing the current state of affairs. 
from Breakingviews:
Tip for the Murdochs: don’t be yourselves
By Chris Hughes
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Don’t be yourselves. That’s probably the best tip for Rupert and James Murdoch as they prepare to face UK lawmakers over the phone hacking scandal engulfing the UK newspaper arm of News Corporation.
from Breakingviews:
James Murdoch should take a break from News Corp
By Chris Hughes
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
James Murdoch should stage his own tactical retreat and resign from News Corporation. The heir apparent to his father Rupert’s media empire has lost authority. That may not be entirely his fault. Underlings seem to have let him down, and his father has undermined him by backing Rebekah Brooks, the head of the group’s scandal-ridden UK newspapers, who reports to James. The best way for Murdoch jnr to regain control of his own destiny is to leave.
from MediaFile:
News of the World hacking scandal: UK’s Miliband speaks out
UK opposition leader Ed Miliband called on the British media to clean up its image and emphasized the need for a speedy public inquiry into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Watch clips of Miliband's comments at a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker event below:
Miliband to British media: "Clean up your image"
Miliband calls for judge-led inquiry into phone-hacking scandal
Miliband wants media watchdog scrapped
Miliband calls for BSkyB referral
Miliband urges UK Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize
Follow our live coverage of the phone-hacking scandal below:
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