Guardian UK: Allowing media to be concentrated in the hands of a few will impoverish society

(Guardian UK) Less than a year ago, the country came within days, possibly hours, of allowing the largest and most dominant news company the UK has ever seen to in effect double in size. There was apparently nothing in law that enabled anyone to stop the News Corporation bid for the full ownership of BSkyB on grounds of plurality.

At the eleventh hour, parliament, stirred by revulsion about the News of the World hacking the phones of a dead teenager, 7/7 victims, and the relatives of murdered children, eventually decided unanimously to call on News Corp to abandon the bid. The company did so.

But the legal position remains the same today. In theory, there would be nothing to prevent Rupert Murdoch from launching a future bid for BSkyB once the furore over phone-hacking has died down.

The Leveson inquiry has, understandably, focused on how to regulate press content, complaints and standards. All important stuff. But part of Lord Justice Leveson's brief is also to think about plurality – how you stop media power being concentrated in a few hands. It's a complex subject, as Ofcom's latest review makes plain. But it is every bit as important as the remodelling of self-regulation, if not more so, and now the judge has barely six weeks left in which to consider the issue. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/24/overwhelming-case-media-plurality