Be honest: you love Rupert Murdoch. You love Sky Sports, the fifth season of Mad Men, the Sky News iPad app, The Times’ Philip Collins, Caitlin Moran on last night’s television and Erica Wagner on next week’s read. You love books from HarperCollins, Manchester United in three dimensions, and the Sunday Times uncovering the unprecedented level of access to No 10 enjoyed by Conservative donors.
We all do. Maybe you love different things than I do: perhaps you prefer Libby Purves on theatre to Daniel Finkelstein on politics, but whether it was the animated hi-jinks of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie or The Art of Fielding, this year, the Murdoch empire produced something you’d really rather not live without.
The continued success of the Murdoch enterprise – because, underneath the froth about failed takeovers and falling share prices, this was a year in which people were wowed by Gary Neville and in awe of Alex Crawford – is a testament to the fact that, more often than not, markets work. They’re the best system yet devised for promoting merit and driving up standards. That’s why competition in public services resulted in improved outcomes in schools and hospitals. But its misdemeanours and excesses are a reminder of another truth about markets: the problem with them is that give us exactly what we want.
The Murdoch empire, as depicted in Tom Watson’s magnum opus, Dial M For Murdoch, is a sprawling and sinister shadow state that has colluded with the police and the political class, with dire and unprecedented consequences for British politics. Dial M For Murdoch is a brilliantly written, perfectly pitched piece of polemic that demands to be read: but it’s wrong. News International isn’t a unique ogre, sitting in Wapping and poisoning our politics. It’s a successful business, and businesses, from Tesco to Amazon to your local corner shop, only succeed when they give customers what they want. And the fact is we were all obsessed with what she was wearing, what he said to who, where they did it, and how many times. We were the demand. They were just the supply.
There’s an unhappy conceit in progressive politics: that the only reason that we haven’t built Scandinavian socialism in Britain is because the voters were tricked, because people didn’t really want Thatcherism or New Labour, that we had other options. This isn’t just a British disease: during the peak of President John Adams’ popularity, Thomas Jefferson spoke of the people ‘recovering their true sight’. Progressives worldwide con themselves into thinking that people couldn’t possibly disagree with them if they were left to their own devices. We laughed at George W Bush, mocked Boris Johnson, and sneered at Silvio Berlusconi. But ultimately, they laughed longer, because they won. The real villain of the piece – if there is one – in Dial M For Murdoch is ourselves alone: the people who rushed to the newsstands and who marvelled at the scoops unearthed. There’s a disconnect in progressive politics between our expressed values and our actions, a gulf between our words and the aspirations of our voters.
David Cameron’s great strength at the last election was that he projected an image of himself as comfortable with modern Britain. While Cameron has lost his sheen, one of Labour’s current weaknesses is that we can seem opposed to modern Britain, a creature of the counterculture. At a time when people are concerned about their jobs, their public services, and their futures, perhaps there are more important subjects for Labour to discuss than the Murdochs.
—————————————————————————————
Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a journalist, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com
—————————————————————————————
how dare you assume what I buy ,what I express,conceal “love” you you bloody … man you ! NONE of those things you mention – NONE of those mad men in any shape or form. Mind your mouth; I am shocked and I am sure many others are too at being patronisingly called creatures of counterculture .If you were able to poll such a thing it would probably be those who do not vote at all against whom such jibes could more reasonably be directed.
Rupert Murdoch – not a British citizen – had a political agenda for the UK. He would drip feed this into mass consciousness using his newspapers and tv, both in what they reported and in what they did not report. Anyone who looked willing and capable of challenging this was threatened with having their private life exposed or at least raked over, being perpetually rubbished irrespective of the quality of their arguments, and ridiculed until all credibility was lost.
This unelected and unaccountable power was a toxic, poisonous influence at the the heart of our democracy. The debate is not therefore about people’s aspirations but about the corrosion of our democractic processes. Murdoch mattered, this debate mattered and people like Tom Watson, Chris Bryant and others who had the bottle to fight and challenge and expose this have rescued our democractic process. It really is as dramatic as that.
NI products aren’t really – necessarily – better. In terms of sport they’re noisier, flashier and often dumber. They are frequently inferior products to the alternatives. But due to frequently-suspect political deals Sky has a monopoly on those products. That’s not the market at work, or improvement by competition – it’s an ethos that uses every conceivable weapon at its disposal to get what it wants and ensures the monopoly remains the status quo.
Also I think that the size of News International means that it continually provide the things we do want (Sky+, Sky Sports) and use that to offset things we don’t watch. For all the apparently great drama on Sky One and Sky Atlantic, the channels have almost no viewers, Atlantic rarely rises above the 80,000 mark, even for Mad Men. In essence the Murdoch business model is to use the profit from its popular products to ringfence loads of brilliant television (24, Mad Men, Stella, Lost, Game Of Thrones etc etc) and news coverage (Times paywall) from the average reader. That’s all fair in capitalism too, but I think overall it’s bad for the consumer and is certainly not a, “they’re only meeting demand” model.
What I find highly amusing is the utter hatred Murdoch and his cronies have for the BBC – mainly because they are proof, if any were needed, that you simply cannot buy your way into quality broadcasting. He desparately craves the respectability and further influence that the kind of mass media exposure that owning or running one of the big 5 channels gives, but Sky cannot escape its “Council House TV” roots.
Other than what they’ve filched from HBO, which would get here eventually anyway, I’m not sure what else I actually consume from them.
As for corporate prowess, large companies might get a foothold by competition, but they retain their dominance by changing the environment in which they operate. Tesco can build larger stores than permitted, safe in the knowledge local councillors will be loath to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in the courts fighting them. Companies that can best pass their overheads onto the public purse will do so, buying and bullying the necessary intermediaries. And once one does it, the market dictates you all have to do it.
Joournalist ??Clearly would like a job with News International
In reality – Stpehen means “lay off the Murdochs, apparently mainly because they
i) generally back our centrist viewpoint
ii) we’ll need their support in 2015”
Along with many of the population, politically active or not, I actively avoid any manifestation of the Murdoch empire, and no, I do not (legally) watch Sky Sports, have no interest in Mad Men, I don’t possess the Sky News iPad app, nor indeed an iPad, I wouldn’t read the Times’ and the Sunday Times, still less Philip Collins, Erica Wagner or Caitlin Moran if you paid me. Why would I, as a socialist, read Danny Finkelstein, for heaven’s sake ? The man who left the turncoat SDP to join the Tories, and hasn’t said anything original or interesting for a decade.
We do not have to accept any or all of the above if we want to be popular or respected in British politics.
Weird use of the Jefferson quote to make your point: I think you’ll find that Jefferson won the next election.
You’ve pretty much accidentally made the point that Progress really needs to wake up to – follow the political tide and you get drowned in it, as New Labour did. Jefferson, in contrast, reshaped the politics of the USA to the point where Adams’ Federalists were never again elected to the White House.
… Who watches Sky News, exactly…? Also, NI doesn’t produce Mad Men.
I believe that due to the influence the Murdoch stable of outlets can have over British politics is very strong and they know that hence “The Wot Sun Won It” etc. If we sit back and allow media barons to dictate or influence either politics or the justice system we are 90% along the road of our democracy being bypassed in a flurry of sound-bites and dramatic headlines. Time to put media at arms length, the Kennedy Media School Era has passed, that was apparent during the General Election Debates, the tail was wagging the dog. Time to restore the balance.
On a day when another Coalition Secretary of State is is found embarrassingly and maybe fatally in the mire exuded fromMurdock NI I hardly think it is the time to back off. Or does Progress support such close relationships between ministers who are supposed to make quasi legal decisions and big corporate interests as a foundation of future Labour policy?
Ps I was interested in the viewing figures quoted for Sky Atlantic. Sky have been mounting a big push on this Channel in the press. I assume it did not involve any sweeteners as the travel supplements seem to do.
There are few things as important as corruption in politics. Murdoch’s monopoly has corrupted British politics for 30 years now and at last is receiving its comeuppance!