Rupert Murdoch vs. the BBC

By Anita Roddick, MediaChannel.org. Posted October 23, 2003.

The attacks on the BBC by Tony Blair and his government, joining forces with Rupert Murdoch and his executives at BSkyB, must be viewed in the context of what's already become a fait accompli in the United States – the diminution of public space, especially public broadcasting space, by ever more powerful forces of privatization.

The effort in America dates back more than a decade, to attacks on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) as a 'left-wing' network in the '90s. At the time, $300 million in appropriations from Congress was held up by then-Senator Robert Dole and conservatives launched carefully co-coordinated ad hominem blasts against such supposedly "left-wing presences" on public television as Bill Moyers, David Fanning (who produces the preeminent documentary series,"Frontline") and Rory O'Connor and Danny Schechter of Globalvision for their two purportedly "hard-line Marxist" human rights series titled "South Africa Now" and "Rights and Wrongs" respectively.

Eventually the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, went so far as to attempt to get rid of PBS entirely. Although the Gingrich effort failed to destroy public broadcasting, it was left weakened and more vulnerable than ever – dependent on an increasingly polarized Congress for funding, and prone to staving off extinction and striving for more "balance" by funding explicitly conservative programs, producers and hosts.

Here in Britain, of course, the BBC has one great advantage over PBS in America – the freedom from such political pressure that is afforded by the annual license fee that TV owners pay to fund BBC programming. The annual tax of £116 (US$195) is paid by every British household that owns one or more televisions. The tax raises as much as $4.2 billion for the BBC every year and nobody in government can reapportion it or redistribute it. This ensures that the Beeb is far less vulnerable to political pressures than PBS, which must get its appropriations approved every year by Congress. Thus the BBC, unlike every other public-broadcasting system in the world, is not only well funded, but also well protected from politicians.

In Rupert Murdoch's Crosshairs

Every ten years, however, there is a charter review during which the budget and performance of the BBC is reassessed. The next one is in 2006. Since the BBC is one of the most influential institutions in British life, the upcoming review will become one of the nation's most profound political battles. As media maven Michael Wolff puts it, it's all "about getting a piece of the pie. Or at least it's a fight about Murdoch's piece of the pie."

Not surprisingly, then, Rupert Murdoch and his political cronies have begun to lay the groundwork for an all-out assault on the BBC and the annual fee. While they will probably not be able to eliminate it, their endless attacks, slanted polls, and political pressuring may well result in a reduction in the amount received by the BBC annually, thus weakening the Beeb's strength as a "public" competitor to private corporate interests, but especially to the multi-channel Murdoch-owned news and entertainment network BSkyB.

This impending assault should be viewed through the prism of what otherwise appears the oddest of couplings: Rupert Murdoch and Tony Blair. Blair first became prime minister owing in large measure to the endorsements of the traditionally rightwing Murdoch press. It now seems apparent that Blair made a devil's pact years ago to garner Murdoch's support, despite their obvious political differences, and Murdoch is now collecting his payback on the installment plan.

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