THE RULES that govern British media should be changed to ensure no company enjoys a dominant share of newspapers and television stations, Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable has said.
“What I want to see is a set of very clear, unambiguous rules – the rules are very unclear about what plurality means; clear, unambiguous rules about market shares and dominant players and a presumption against cross-ownership between press and television,” he said.
Final decisions would have to wait until the Levenson inquiry into press standards is finished, he said, but he went on: “I think in the past having media moguls dominating the British media is deeply unhelpful in terms of plurality because of the wider impact in the political world.” Privately, the Liberal Democrats claim they were warned last year that Rupert Murdoch-controlled newspapers would target them, unless Mr Cable cleared the way for News Corporation’s full takeover of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Mr Cable did not publicly support such claims, saying only: “There was heavy lobbying. It was perfectly legal, I am not suggesting that anything illegal happened on that front and I don’t want to dwell on the past and my own role in it.”
Senior figures in the Labour Party, meanwhile, told the Observerthat party leader Ed Miliband received a similar threat when he began to criticise News International after it emerged that the News of the Worldhad hacked into the voicemail of murder victim Milly Dowler.
Mr Cable said “a balanced historical view” of Rupert Murdoch’s involvement in the British media would show that he had made “a positive contribution” to the media, but his company had now become “very, very dominant”.
The business secretary rejected charges that he had targeted Mr Murdoch: “It isn’t simply an issue of Rupert Murdoch, there are other media companies who could have the same influence in future and we have got to stop that.”
His decision to refer News Corporation’s bid to fully own BSkyB to the regulator, Ofcom, had been correct: “There was a lot of advice to just let it through. If that had happened, it would have been a fait accompli, but it did go to the regulator and as a result it was stopped and we are in a much healthier position today.”
Meanwhile it has emerged that Surrey police, which investigated the Dowler murder in 2002, removed one officer from the investigation team at the time because he had divulged information to a former police colleague.
It said that there was no evidence that the officer had passed on information to the News of the World,but the Dowler solicitor Mark Lewis said the family wanted the issue to be investigated by the Levenson inquiry.
