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Murdoch's smoke and mirrors deal gets cosy Tory approval

Cosy meetings in comfy houses tucked away in the Oxfordshire countryside: blind eyes being turned to past editorial indiscretions; a cast of venal kingmakers, amoral  bag-men and unctuous politicians....Welcome to the News Corp-Tory Party nexus.

We don’t have need to go into great detail on the Country Living particulars; we just need to know that on 3 March, Culture Secretary Jeremy (‘Berkshire’) Hunt, green-lighted Murdoch's News Corporation plan to takeover BSkyB. The proposed deal went through after News Corp undertook to spin off Sky News into a new independent company.
The upshot of it all is, that if the deal went through, Murdoch would still hold a sizeable minority holding in Sky News. A ten year ban on News Corp buying back in and an independent chairman are being offered as laughable fig leaves to spare the blushes of the competition watchdog.
'Disastrous'
Media Regulator Ofcom has pronounced itself pleased that News Corp has "agreed to place editorial independence and integrity at the heart of [the proposed news spin-off] and to underpin this with arrangements that secure full independent governance".
Labour’s Dennis Skinner called the decision a "disastrous day for democracy" and not without some justification.
Perennial and tireless voice of the people John McDonnell, Labour’s London-Irish MP in Hayes and Harlington, called on Mr Hunt to reconsider and refer the deal to the Competition Commission because "nobody believes these undertakings agreed to by Murdoch will be adhered to in the long term".
Hunt’s decision now goes to consultation which closes on 21 March. Once he has considered responses to the consultation, ‘Berkshire’ will decided whether he still believes that the undertakings should be accepted or whether the merger should be referred to the Competition Commission.
Aside from giving what many see as an unacceptably high share of the market to Murdoch’s entreprises,  BSkyB is also a prize milch cow for News Corp. It is currently enjoying the pay-off on years of high spend in sharp end technologies like HD TV and broadband and some pre-tax forecasts are coming in at around £1bn in the year to the end of June.
The predictable bunfight over BSkyB shares is ongoing.  The dance between News Corp and its intended suggests that BSkyB won’t accept less than £9bn or 850p-a-share from Murdoch’s media behemoth. Shareholders have already rejected a £7.8bn or 700p-a-share.
'Whitewash'
Of course, you know it’s got to be really bad news when you start getting common ground between the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.  The whole deal was dubbed “a complete whitewash” by a spokesman for an alliance of media groups including BT and the publishers of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
James (Son of Digger) Murdoch and David Cameron
"The proposed undertaking is pure window-dressing," said the spokesman. The ad hoc media alliance raises valid and pertinent concerns when it says that “the takeover would give News Corp greater power to restrict or distort competition through cross-promotion, bundling, banning rivals' advertisements and distorting the advertising market with cross-platform deals."
For the record (and reluctantly in discharge of my journalistic duty to balance), News Corp had this to say: “News Corporation continues to believe the proposed acquisition of the shares in BSkyB … will not result in insufficient plurality for any audience in the UK”....
The Daily Telegraph was a little less detached in its conclusions about the media giant’s contempt for the political process: “News Corp welcomed the announcement by Mr Hunt that he was minded to accept the remedies it was suggesting.”
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