Question Time Devoted Completely to Neuter Murdoch

[Teddy Bear]

The usually outrageous Question Time this evening plummeted further this evening with a show that was so blatantly biased and unbalanced, that the only thing that makes me angrier is knowing the British public won't do anything about it.

We are already used to a 4-2 left to right panel including Dimbleby, and a carefully selected audience to ensure a left-wing majority on every show. With so many issues going on in the world today that people might want to see debated, the BBC focus tonight was on the transgressions of the News of the World hacking. Dimbleby used the topic to manipulate the topic towards Murdoch, and whether as a result of the hacking, he would still be a 'king-maker', referring to the power he has by his media to shape public opinion. Naturally a subject the BBC understands very well. Fearing his 'hold' on the market if he would now acquire BSkyB, the BBC also did their best to bring public attention to be against such an acquisition.

55 minutes of a 1 hour show was used on this topic, that was purely for the BBC to try and influence the public to be against Murdoch, leaving the BBC as the main power, but of course that part of the equation is not mentioned. Suddenly the BBC is 'holier than thou'.

As if to rub salt further into the wound, at the end of the programme Dimbleby tells us that the next show will be in September, and reminds everybody that it will be on the anniversary of 9/11. Perhaps somebody should have reminded him that this evening was the anniversary of 7/7, an event that had greater influence on people in this country.

[Teddy Bear]

There's no question that the hacking by the NOTW was highly unethical. But what sickens me even more is to see those at the BBC, guilty of complete contempt to their charter and the standards they are supposed to uphold, sanctimoniously using the scandal as if it really shows how good they are in comparison.

More importantly, they have totally disregarded any pretence at balance in the manner and frequency of their coverage of this event. Just as 55 minutes out of 60 in last nights' Question Time was devoted to the subject, every current affair programme that I switched to today had an obsession with it, using all and sundry to make sure their propaganda was drummed in to its public.

Their ulterior motive that makes this continual, even obsessive behaviour is purely to try and derail Murdoch obtaining BSkyB, thus making themselves the biggest brainwashing instrument out there.

Melanie Phillips comments on and explains this in more detail.

Britain's media earthquake

As the scandal over the News of the World continues to grow, so do its deeply troubling implications -- way beyond the gates of Wapping. It has yet to be established how high this corruption went in the Metropolitan Police as well as in News International. David Cameron’s difficulties over hiring Andy Coulson as his spin doctor, not to mention his close friendship with NI’s Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks, can only deepen – as his uncertain demeanour at today’s press conference illustrated, where although he dumped Brooks he showed he cannot so easily wriggle out of the Coulson link.

Perhaps most explosive is what Labour MP Tom Watson said about James Murdoch in the emergency Commons debate on the scandal. Under protection of Parliamentary privilege he said:

Mr James Murdoch should be suspended from office while the police investigate what I believe is his personal authorisation to plan a cover-up of this scandal. Mr James Murdoch is the chairman. It is clear now that he personally, without board approval, authorised money to be paid by his company to silence people who had been hacked, and to cover up criminal behaviour within his organisation. That is nothing short of an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

If this is true, it may be that the extraordinary lengths to which Rupert Murdoch is going to protect Brooks is that – as suggested here and elsewhere -- she is acting as a lightning rod to protect his son, who is the heir to his empire. For his part, in his own careful statement yesterday designed to draw a line in the sand, James Murdoch suggested that it was ignorance at the top of the full extent of the wrongdoing at the NoW which had unwittingly led NI to issue misleading statements.

The truth of any of these claims against the NoW has not yet been established; but if even half of them are well-founded they are indeed truly sickening. Yet as I warned here two days ago, and as Andrew Gilligan points out in a thoughtful Telegraph piece today, the jubilation by Murdoch’s media enemies may die in their throats if this scandal provides the excuse politicians have been waiting for to muzzle the press.

Already there are loud calls for a new regulatory system; today the Prime Minister said the Press Complaints Commission had failed. So it has; but what is at stake now is not just the fate of Murdoch’s empire but the freedom of the press. Yet the anti-Murdoch media are incapable of seeing this. They are simply hysterical with the delirium at having so badly wounded the man they have long elevated into a cartoon hate-figure.

Moreover, the ecstatic BBC and Guardian are hardly dispassionate observers of these events. They are direct competitors of NI and have an overwhelming commercial interest in bringing it down.

But that isn’t the worst of it. In a western world whose intelligentsia is consumed by irrational and malevolent hatred of America and Israel and is hell-bent on undermining the west and assisting its mortal enemies, Murdoch has provided the one media voice putting forward a pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-defence of the west position -- including support for the Iraq war.

That’s why the left hate him so much. They display the same kind of frenzied, irrational obsession over Murdoch as they do over America, Israel and Iraq. When you consider the BBC’s ‘group-think’ bent journalism, or the disgusting support the Guardian provides, week in, week out, to anti-Jewish, anti-gay, women-beating hate-mongers, to see the BBC and Guardian scarcely able to contain themselves over Murdoch’s disaster is a nauseating spectacle.

The left complain that his proposed takeover of BSkyB would concentrate monopoly media power in the hands of one individual. But that one individual happens to be the only one who can prevent the left from completing its monopoly of the political and cultural debate. If Murdoch is brought down by this scandal, the danger is that there will be no protection against the left’s stranglehold on the British cultural windpipe. As the Autonomous Mind blog observes:

Sky itself could play host to current affairs and documentaries coming from a conservative viewpoint. The BBC don’t want that and the Guardian, which influences so much BBC output, doesn’t want that either. Which is why the phone hacking issue has been transformed by the Guardian and BBC into the campaign it really is – stop Murdoch from owning Sky.

The cynicism is sickening, but the stakes are the highest. This is about exerting influence over the British people. The propaganda broadcast on any number of issues, from climate change to public spending, is designed to underpin the ‘progressive’ agenda. That influence will weaken if a conservative leaning alternative is available for viewers to choose. Love him or hate him, Murdoch has the capacity to deliver that alternative which is why he is being assailed.

But awful thing is that, if these allegations about NI prove even only partially true, the enemies of both Murdoch and all the public causes that he champions will be correct that he presided over an organisation that debauched British public life. And so those of us who stand for the defence of free societies against its enemies both within and without will have been dealt a terrible blow.