There are some bits of news that, no matter how unreasonable and unwanted, you just expect. So it was no surprise to wake up this morning and find that the Con-Dems had dealt a vicious and serious blow to the plurality of the media by allowing NewsCorp to complete its takeover of BSkyB. Forget all… [Read more…]
December 23, 2010
In September, I asked on these pages whether Vince Cable was the most likely senior Lib Dem to fall foul of the coalition government and move to the backbenches, or even defect to Labour. In some respects, those questions have proved to be important ones, given Cable’s recent infidelities in declaring that he would be… [Read more…]
April 1, 2010
It’s been one of the worst-kept secrets in journalism for months, but the Times newspaper has finally revealed the details of its paywall, which will come into effect from June. Anybody wishing to access the Times or the Sunday Times online will be required to pay £1 a day or £2 a week. The Sun… [Read more…]
January 27, 2010
We’re already pretty much 1/12 of the way through 2010, and there are no signs yet that this year is set to be, as the Economist predicted, ‘the year of the paywall’. Thank heavens for that, though there’s still a long way to go, of course. With numerous people within the media having been rumbling… [Read more…]
January 2, 2010
The vast expanse of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire means millions of people across the world are reliant on it for their news, yet this responsibility is not one that Murdoch has ever taken seriously. My view is that the provision of news is crucial to any democracy, and therefore that the it should not be… [Read more…]
September 30, 2009
Most people of a political persuasion will remember, or at least be aware of, the 1992 claim that it was the Sun ‘what won’ the 1992 election for John Major’s Conservative Party. The campaign against Neil Kinnock is as infamous as it was vindictive, though I have my doubts whether or not a newspaper, even… [Read more…]
September 3, 2009
The BBC has been the subject of two excellent articles this week, though both approach the topic from different angles. Jonathan Freedland blogs on the importance of the Beeb as a national institution at guardian.co.uk, while the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan challenges oft-repeated claim that the BBC is left-leaning by nature. Both articles are, to… [Read more…]
July 10, 2009
It comes as a shock to nobody that the News of the World is in hot water over an alleged phone hacking operation. Such activities on behalf of the paper were exposed more than two years ago when editor Andy Coulson was forced to resign after the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman was sent to… [Read more…]
March 3, 2011
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