However, Thompson also acknowledged that market conditions have changed since the BBC's last major strategic review, Creative Future, published in July 2006, and that the implications for the corporation could be far-reaching.

"The old balance between the BBC and the rest of media has been upset as commercial business models are under severe pressure," he wrote. "The wider economy and the public finances as a whole look profoundly different to how they did when we launched Creative Future."

He hinted that this could mean the BBC's role may change in the future. "All of these things pose big questions for the BBC, and that means it is the right time to take a searching look at what the BBC should look like in the post-2012, post-switchover world."

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The pressure will be on us — the smarty-pants of the internet — to source the real news amongst all the crap that will be dished out, that will be pre-munched to a pulp or sweetened as lies spruiked as honest opinions... The age of deceit will continue, raised a couple of notches... See the chip of the old block cartoon at top,

G’day Gus,

I agree that the media will continue to do what it likes under the aegis of “free speech”, especially when they are the only ones who can practice that in what is loosely called a “democracy”.

Like so many instances in the formation of politics, the media opportunity to influence has become more powerful than the elected government especially in the democracies. 

From the Monarchy’s “born to rule” method of the “Town Cryer”; to the underground “press” of the revolutions; to the policed editing of the Dictatorships and to the selective decisions of Communism – is there a way to cleanse our information sources? No matter how many times the “Bush/Howards” of this world claim that it is better to leave the decision-making to the business honour system of a Capitalist media is an indication of what tripe we have been consuming and seemingly what we will still have to cop. Fair dinkum!

Gus – it is indefensible to ignore the fact that contemporarily, the media has the power to elect governments (or government committees) under any political regime.  If this is even correct in a majority of cases, then the only common denominator is the media itself – and WHO controls them?

Shall we consider history and accept that a “Monarchy” system still exists and only its “born to rule” is different?  Instead of the Monarchy being born into the wealth and power – society has created a situation where money is power and itself breeds the continuation of that power, and then follows the identical inevitable corruption (since absolute power corrupts absolutely).

I think - no I hope – that the current increase of independent voices on the internet will in some way encourage people to at least exercise reason and logic when it comes to the decision as to who will protect their future.

Cheers mate.  God bless Australia.

NE OUBLIE.

5 . Your ABC offers lessons on Branding Content 101

Geoff Paine, sometime writer, producer and actor, writes:
Is Money for Jam the new template for commercial TV? Glenn Dyer observed in yesterday's Crikey that the show is one long ‘free kick’ for the NAB, so we better strap on the shin pads -- there could be more free kicks heading our way.

Seems like the upcoming SPAA Conference (Screen Producers Association of Australia) is devoting an entire day to ‘Branded Entertainment’. You know, programs paid for by brands in the hope you’ll find them entertaining and maybe even buy their product. Some of the potential partners you can network with are from Telstra Media, Ninemsn, Fremantle Media and ... hang on ... the ABC.

Sorry, the ABC?? Yep, the Executive Producer, Multiplatform Production, ABC TV will be there, hawking our ABC to producers hungry to make their name selling someone else’s.

Here’s what they’re offering on November 19:

When the Story fits the Brand -- A Case Study of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and the partnership with Tourism Australia: a discussion of the strategy behind one of the most successful tourism campaigns in recent years.

Translation: The, er, "strategy" was to throw a few more shots onto the shooting schedule, throw 40 million or so onto Baz’ budget and hope everyone forgot the "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?" disaster. Any questions?

Can content’s new "equity" producers help take Australian television to new heights? Brands are enthusiastically pursuing opportunities ushered in by digital television

Translation: To make it even harder to watch.

What do advertisers need from program partners?

Translation: More excuses to shove products before a shrinking audience.

How can brand interactivity better engage viewers with traditional shows?

Translation: By "traditional shows" we mean those that wasted advertising time by telling our stories or reflecting who we are as a nation. We are consumers, okay, so get used to it.

What role do programmers play in brand-generated shows?

Translation: "Pimp" comes to mind.

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read more of Geoff Paine....

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Gus: ... Wait, there is more...

unless one accept the idea of a universal truth — a concept that I do not subscribe to — there will always be relative positions from where to see the same thing in different light. The next problem starts when people (in the media or in other position of INFLUENCE) deliberately manipulate the viewpoint to sustain or create an outcome, to sell viewpoints or products, or concepts in which people will get hurt... To some extend, we cannot stop this, and we have only our voice (sometimes our fists) to express our views which we hopefully see sitting closer to reality that the lies or the cheap shots peddled by some of the media and governments. These days media, including ABC news, and government seem to be run by pun writers... Leave it to the cartoonists, I'd say.

Lies and deceptions, as I mention in the Age of Deceit, are part of nature. The game for me is not to be caught in them and not be hurt by then while surviving... And sail as close to the truth as possible. Do I lie? Of course... relatively. But meddling in the truth from my perspective does not affect the big narrative and will to some extend be like sticky plasters on wounds, to stop it festering from the thousand cuts of the deliberate dangerous liars...

Thus I try to minimise the manipulation of me by others by recognising their manipulation, a push often not coming from their own awareness but from a habit of having been immersed in a particular social construct from the beginning of their existence — a process that has brainwashed their own focus (including mine unless I "dismantle" some of the most fanciful ideas). I also try to minimise my manipulation of others, although should I wish to demolish a particular view point I will circumvent the focus with a variety of viewpoint — in a pseudo-philosophical gymnastic — to show the gamut of other views that some (many) people never knew existed. Critical curiosity is essential.

Of course I have my own views but they are worth zilch in the fair wind and worth a lot in my own mind.

Last night on SBS, there was this documentary on the "Origins of Flowering Plants". Having worked in helping science being published in this subject, I was interested. When it was shown that the earliest flowering plant found in China had been misdated by about 20 million years, one could think in the scheme of things it does not mean much... Without flowering plants, there would not be us, humans, as we know us. Flowering plants provide the grains for food. But the dating process in palaeobotany and palaeontology is important as the boundaries between aeons and periods are quite specific in our latest scientific analysis. the changes in this planet's "history" are very defined and we have uncovered these changes as expressed in this list:

The cryptozoic (from 4.6 billion years to about 570 million years ago — life in existence from about 3.5 billion years in unicellular and primitive multi-cellular organism "soup") and the phanerozoic, itself divided into life in the seas only (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian — placoderm "fishes"), evolution of "prehistoric" plants (Devonian, carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, part of the Cretaceous) evolution of modern flora including flowering plants (part of the Cretaceous, Tertiary and Quaternary — itself divided into several subsections such as the Pleistocene and the Holocene). Animal "evolution" of course followed a similar pathway as plants and animal changes are closely linked in the carbon equation, itself influencing and being influenced by climatic conditions as well as plate tectonics. The loop is more like a twist in Chaotic yet favourable circumstantial environment.

The dating of this earliest known flowering plant was important as it would have shifted the "birth" of flowering plants into the Jurassic, demanding a lot of rewriting of the scientific record in regard to what is known of flowering plants, which in science is an okay process, but time consuming. To some extend one could speculate that the Glossopterids were an evolution step between conifers and flowering plant in their reproductive systems. Flowers are sexual organs and sexuality (sexual differentiation) has ruled the earth from quite early on. But I will leave the Glossopterids to the real scientists...

Because I have never lived throughout this entire history, I have to accept either the storytellers who invented the god delusion or the work of the science detectives who have been able to reconstruct this puzzle with precise timelines. Even in the 1930s, these timelines were still out of whack as the dinosaur era was promoted in popular encyclopedia as having continued till 6 million years ago (some of these fanciful timelines are used by pseudo-scientists still). We now know the Dinosaurs disappeared at the end of the cretaceous, 65 millions years ago but they took about ONE million years to become extinct, except for the birds (very close relative of the dinosaurs).

The timelines became far more precise with the discovery of nuclear decay et al — including genetics. In the end some people could argue that it's all boloney and that the world was created in six days and witches had to be burned to the stakes... But if this was the case, then our mobile phone would not work.

The changes on this planet and our ability to develop technology such as a mobile phone are linked. Magic and/or gods have nothing to do with the precise processes that underpin the technology of bombs, cars, mobile phones, flowering plants et all... We can pray to gods our heart content, the processes are mechanical (even at energy and quantum levels) and chemical.

And our consciousness, the delta of (our) memory, is greater than that of the entire universe (Gus' paradox). Because it is our own. But we are frightened to accept this reality. Thus we replace it with delusive lies and transfer of responsibility... But our misunderstanding can also come from a faulty memory, informed by a specific social construct, thus the delta of memory is a misunderstanding. In the end our personal and social choices are stylistic in which entertainment plays a good part to fill our spare time. Good distraction from the ultimate reality of death. But as long as entertainment does not overtake our hard sciences in importance, we'll be cool.
Let's make the best stylistic choices for peace, while minimising our lies about it.

Our planet is in danger. We have created the danger by releasing the long-entrapped carbon back into the atmosphere. What are we going to do about it? deny we've done it? ignore the "problem"? Increase our plague numbers? let it be?... Dismiss most of the scientists for the sake of a few scientists who cannot see the wood for the trees?... Go fifty-fifty in the name of "objectivity", this media whore that charms relativism into mud?

Wait for it... Bang.

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From the BBC

There is evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes in the recent conflict in Gaza, a long-awaited official UN report says.

It accuses Israel of deliberately using "disproportionate force" in the three-week operation in December and January.

The report also condemned rocket attacks by Palestinian groups which Israel says sparked its offensive.

Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166.

Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.

Israel, which had refused to co-operate with the UN fact-finding team, said the report was "clearly one-sided".

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Proportion of "one-sided", please? Proportion of "both"?... A hundred to one? Gosh... I despair...

Reuters

Friday, 18 September 2009

Publishers of general news would find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, the chief executive of Google said yesterday.

Speaking to a group of British broadcasting executives via video link, Eric Schmidt said he could, however, imagine niche providers of content such as business news succeeding in this area.

Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online.

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity," he said.

"So my guess is for niche and specialist markets ... it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news."

Murdoch, whose press empire includes popular tabloids like the New York Post and Britain's Sun as well as The London Times, said in August he may start charging for access to news websites by the middle of next year.

The Wall Street Journal, bought by News Corp in 2007, is one of the few daily newspapers that makes people pay to read its news on the Web.

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see toon at top

There is a scandal in British politics that is passing almost unnoticed in the night. It will alter the ecology of our politics – and our culture – in ways that will damage us for decades to come.

There is one thing most British people think we do best: broadcasting. A recent ICM poll found that 77 per cent think the BBC is an institution to be proud of, and 63 per cent say it is good value for money. This makes the BBC by a long way the most popular public institution in Britain – yet both main political parties are lining up to happy-slap Auntie. The link between the licence fee and the Beeb is about to be broken by a Labour government, and a Tory government will sweep in and widen the gap, while unleashing a snarling pack of Fox News-style hounds across the rest of the channels. And for what? To win the favour of a foreign right-wing billionaire.

Total withdrawal from the European Union is the most favoured option among party members when asked how a Tory government should handle the issue, putting them totally at odds with a Tory leadership committed to British membership. Some 82 per cent want to freeze Britain's financial contributions to the EU.

MEANWHILE

Two prominent east European allies of the Tories at the centre of a bitter row over their far-right links will be attending the Conservatives' annual conference in Manchester next week.

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, yesterday accused Michal Kaminski, the rightwing Polish leader of the Conservatives' caucus in the European parliament, of having an antisemitic and neo-Nazi past. He also said the rightwing Latvian party led by Roberts Zile, For Fatherland and Freedom, was guilty of celebrating Hitler's Waffen-SS.

Leading Jewish figures have condemned the invitation, describing the actions of the Latvian party as "vile". The two men are to take part in a conference fringe meeting on the future of Europe. Both strongly deny the charges levelled by Miliband.

Kaminski, a member of an extreme nationalist Polish party in his youth and a close ally of the president, Lech Kaczynski, is to speak at the session on Tuesday, which is also being attended by the Tories' Europe spokesman, Mark Francois, Conservative sources said.

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The far right wing Hitlerians and the far right Zionists do not see eye to eye. I wonder why... Would having Aussie Tony as El Presidente (read the job specs) smooth the corners?... And dud Europe? Sure... See toon at top...

courtesy of Crikey .....

Rupert the Sun King's moral posture takes on a slouch

Margaret Simons writes:

Dear oh dear what a mendacious lather that old dog Rupert Murdoch is trying to whip up.

Over the weekend the Sun King used the nastiest language at the so-called World Media Summit in Beijing to slag off the likes of Google and Yahoo, describing them as content kleptomaniacs  because they aggregate News Corporation's content.

What self-serving moralistic tosh.

I have written previously about this claim that Google is a thief on my blog, but given that this high and mighty line is likely to become popular as the mainstream media seeks to change its business model to seek payment for content, it is worth restating the facts.

Google and Yahoo are not thieves. Newspaper companies have for years invited the search engines in, and indeed laid out the welcome mat and the "help yourself" signs. Mainstream media did this because, rightly or wrongly, they believed it suited their interests.

Until very recently, news organisation embraced Google and the like because of the belief that the search engines and aggregators helped build their brands and drive traffic to their sites. Now they are changing their minds. Fair enough, and they are quite within their rights to do so. But please drop the moral posturing.

Likewise, would those who think it is in some way sinful to try and charge for content online would also do well to drop the moral posturing.

News publishers, like everyone else online, are in control of what content they make available on the web, who can access it and at what price. There are many confidential sites, such as university databases and subscription sites. Even Crikey is a mix of free and paid for content.

Those who choose to lock up their content and prevent Google crawling simply add a line of code to deny permission. It is simple stuff. Read more here. If media organisations have chosen to let Google in, then that was their choice, made out of self interest, not charity. They may have made a mistake (though I don't think so) but they are hardly victims of crime.

The disadvantage of locking up content is that people can't find you unless they already know you are there. You shut yourself out of conversations. Bloggers and others can't link to you. You make yourself into a members' only club. Lucrative, perhaps, but small.

The stick in the spokes for all mainstream content providers who think that general news content can be put behind a pay wall is public "broadcasters", such as the ABC. Indeed, the battle between commercial media and public broadcasters is likely to be the most keenly fought of the new century, with all kinds of implications for shifting tides of media power.

After all, every taxpayer has already paid for the content carried by the ABC and the BBC.

The next salvo in the ongoing battle is likely to come this Wednesday night, with ABC managing director Mark Scott's speech at the University of Melbourne. Watch this space, and my blog.

From Mark Scott, ABC CEO

...

Now, Rupert Murdoch, the man who just four years ago said he wanted to ''make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands of the digital native'', says he's not going to respond to the demands of these digital natives. Instead, they - who have never in their lives paid for news online - will be asked to respond instead to his demands and start paying.

It strikes me as a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline. Believing that because you once controlled the world you can continue to do so, because you once set the rules, you can do so again, thinking that you still have the power that befits the Emperor.

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see toon at top and go to Gus' view...

From the SMH "Goanna"

Scott, however, neglected to mention that he is the only media executive in Australia who doesn't have to sit down every day and try to work out where the money might come from to keep his own organisation operating.

Courtesy of the Australian government and thus, the taxpayers, the ABC has a guaranteed stream of income - rather more than $700 million a year. The toughest job for the top dog at the ABC is to figure out how much more money he will beg from the government at the next triennial funding negotiations.

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Nice try, but as mentioned earlier: who owns the news?... The dog run over by the car or the reporter telling us the dog was run over by a car? Or the opinionator telling us it was the fault of the dog? Or those blaming Obama for everything, including the dog run over by the car...? Do some media organisation try to make money by supporting opinions rather than telling it like it is?

What was your reaction on reading AA Gill's Sunday Times column in which he boasted about killing a baboon because he wanted to find out "what does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone's close relative"?

The hope that a 'close relative' of the dead baboon would one day kill AA Gill?

That was mine too.

Baboons are, as Guy Norton, a wildlife expert, told the Guardian, "sentient and feeling animals who display similar characteristics to humans with strong parental bonds and sociable group behaviour". Yet here's a Sunday Times columnist boasting about how he shot one.

Gill's obnoxious piece is only the latest in a run of articles in Britain's newspapers whose sole aim seems to be to shock as many readers as possible.

Earlier this month, Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on the death of pop star Stephen Gately, in which she seemed to imply that his sudden death from a heart attack was caused by his homosexuality, led to a record number of calls to the Press Complaints Commission.

While in yesterday's Guardian, Tanya Gold dances on the grave of another recently deceased pop star, Michael Jackson, claiming he was only a "good" dancer, whose "greatest passion" was not music, or dancing, but "to sleep with children".

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Shock and ink... see toon at top...

The BBC must undergo a radical overhaul and Channel 4 should be privatised, a think tank has said in a report on the future of UK broadcasting.

The centre-right Policy Exchange said the BBC should cut the amount it spends on sports rights, popular entertainment and shows for 16 to 35-year-olds.

It also urges the government to drop its controversial "broadband tax".

The BBC Trust said any proposed changes must not put the public value of the BBC or its independence at risk.

The report by the free-market think tank said public service broadcasting was under strain and needed radical reform if it was to survive in the digital age.

It said the BBC should put quality before ratings and leave sport and popular entertainment to commercial channels.

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Do I smell a rat... ???? The whatisname free market think tank is very much affiliated with the conservatives who of course have an agenda at the free market for profit... When the GIO was owned by the NSW government, the other insurance companies cried foul and wanted a piece of the action... At the time GIO was charging about $29 for a green slip (third party insurance)... The other insurers said they could do it cheaper.... which they did for about 2 weeks when they battled it out as soon as they got the gig into their private free marketeers' hands... Next, what went for $19 for this short while, became $99... Now a few years later, the green slip hovers around $500.00 no matter where you turn apart from a few dollars here or there...

see toon at top

Rotund, bald and ferocious, the Fox television boss Roger Ailes is said to have two speeds – attack and destroy. Every night under his watch, millions of Americans are enthused, engrossed or appalled by a lively diet of angry rightwing rhetoric served up on Fox's rolling news channel. But the heady mix of hectoring, finger-pointing and liberal-bashing may be proving too spicy even for the strong stomachs of his employers, the Murdoch clan.

see toon at top

From the ABC

ABC managing director Mark Scott has gone on the attack over a column in The Australian by Mark Day, which raised the idea of the corporation being sold off.

It is the latest salvo in a war of words between Mr Scott and the News Limited organisation over the changing role of the ABC.

Mr Day used the recently announced BBC rollback to raise the argument that in the new media age the ABC should look to do the same.

"The news that the BBC is to scale back its operations and ease its competitive stance against its commercial rivals prompts the immediate question: should the ABC do the same?" he wrote.

In a piece for ABC News Online's The Drum, Mr Scott hit back at the column, defending the public broadcaster's role in the Australian media landscape.

"About 90 per cent of the population believe the ABC is providing a valuable service, delivering on its charter to inform, educate and entertain," he wrote.

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see toon at top...

The ABC and it's conservative title of "Aunty" has always been a political football when Conservatives are in power.

Howard was ruthless in his political execution of any senior public servants who even raised their eyes.  He refused to allow them to appear at Senate hearings (but Rudd didn't). He and his goons like Senator Abetz, regularly complained that the ABC was "leftist".  The Coalition wanted the ABC to be privatized which would automatically make them subject to profit and the market.

Of course, the people most able to manipulate the market are the elite, and they prospered under Howard as measurably as the ordinary workers lost out.  We now hear more often than ever before, that "Mums and Dads" as the Liberals so callously put it, have been badly used in many areas of the market forces.  Howard's Telstra must be annoying those who believed Howard and his stupid appointments and Barnaby Joyce's promise.

I am a fan of Kerry O'Brien but I think that he is independent of the ABC board?  We have Barry Cassidy and his line up of extreme conservatives like Henderson and Bolt and fellow travellers like those who work for Murdoch viz Piers "Sackerman" and Malcolm "tooFarr".  When Cassidy unashamedly puts his travesty of debate on the net, like all guilty spruikers, he makes a joke of it.

Malignant Journalism - it has been our "Albatross" for too long and has been allowed too much of the freedom that they daily deny the people who indirectly pay their salaries. 

Australians should learn that a completely "free" media is a license to lie; to commit perjury and apologize; to destroy lives with unsubstantiated "bad news" which is the basis of their profit.  Their responsibility for truth is to inform, not to entertain, and yet, how many times do we put up with their sometimes shocking accusations when it is only "confirmed by - it has been claimed" - "a reliable source said" - "a senior person said" - the mind boggles!

The readers of this forum know full well what I am trying to say - albeit with more passion than I should.

I am a slave to the principles of right and wrong.  I believe that credit should be given where it is deserved and wrongdoing should be avoided or punished as civilization requires.

What civilization?  When all is said and done, the methods may vary but, every society has rules by which it requires obedience - the days of brutal aggression should have been opposed from the start.

When watching the Africans at the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting, I wonder why the media has always portrayed them as "untermenschen"?

God Bless Australia and may we revive the national pride that Gough gave us.  NE OUBLIE

Tonight is the ABC's annual soiree in Canberra, when the ABC management team and the public broadcaster's leading presenters and producers socialise with politicians in Parliament House. The ABC team will be led by its chairman, Maurice Newman, who was criticised for his speech last Wednesday in which he called on the ABC to ''re-energise the spirit of inquiry''.

Newman's speech was considered and reasonable. He made the obvious point ''there should be no public perception that there is such a thing as an 'ABC view'. '' He added that ''we must be neither believers nor atheists but agnostics who acknowledge people have a right to make up their own minds''. He suggested climate change provided an example where the media had engaged in ''group-think where contrary views have

not been tolerated and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked''.

According to reports in The Australian, Newman's speech angered the ABC1 Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes, who has set himself up as an arbiter of taste on matters media and whose program allows for no on-air debate. It's all about Holmes handing down his (unappealable) judgments each Monday night. In its two decades, Media Watch has had seven presenters, all of whom have been on the left.

In an interview with PM, Newman said ''the ABC has probably been more balanced than most of the mainstream media'' in its handling of the climate change debate. Nevertheless, his implied criticism of the ABC was warranted.

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Warranted???? The ABC has been more "balanced" (50 per cent truth, 50 per cent porkies) than any other media outlet that have been having a field day licking a certain Lord's bottom on the subject of climate change. And suddenly the CSIRO people come out and say categorically that climate warming IS HAPPENING and is human induced. These are the scientists working on the data and the data shows what they said. WHAT ABOUT BLASTING THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, Mr Henderson??? What about criticising the scientists for not being popes of balanced illusions, Mr Newman?

Sure, criticising the mainstrean media boofheadry and the popes of illusions is the domain of Media Watch which, according to Gerard, is biased towards the left... Hey Henderson!... I'd like to see a right-wing presenter putting his boots into Mr Murdoch's arse!!! That would not happen much and the survival rate would be low. Mr Murdoch's views would be accepted as gospel, war would be swell and collateral damage is part of the glory of great civilisations...  Amen.

The ABC has lost some of its critical analytic power. Sure. But this has happened to accomodate the loony tunes of the right wing fundamentalist christians and the dopey-sit-on-the-fence-agnostics... not the reverse. The ABC has diluted its scientific approach to the universe. That is the problem and as Gerard says at the end:

"This will not occur until the ABC becomes genuinely pluralistic and junks fashionable group-think. Let's drink to that tonight."

There is no "group-think" at the ABC: The journalistic standard is that if 2 plus 2 makes 4, then 4 it is. Gerard Henderson is prepared to drink that 2 plus 2 could make 3 in an editorial, tonight. That is the rabid right loony right. Okay...

This is the week of the MacTaggart lecture: that ancient religious ritual which each August summons British television's scattered faithful to Edinburgh to talk shop, drink responsibly, and hear an assortment of fatwahs, imprecations and misty-eyed visions from that year's chosen prophet. This Friday it's the turn of Google's softly spoken but formidable Eric Schmidt. If it's a quietish Bank Holiday weekend or if Eric has something controversial to say, it could play big for a few days. If he says something momentous, it might have a life for decades.

But the truth is that good, bad or indifferent, most MacTaggarts are necessarily, indeed intentionally, of their moment and quickly fade. There is one recent exception, however: a MacTaggart which feels more telling today than on the day it was delivered; a MacTaggart which represents the high-water mark not just of one strain of economic and moral purism about media, but of the singular deference with which that purism was accepted for so long by so many, and that is James Murdoch's speech of 2009.

Subsequent events have given James's famous final flourish – that "the only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit" – an unexpected and almost tragic irony. It's a phrase which sums up his entire case: that all forms of public intervention in and regulation of media are both morally reprehensible and practically useless, and that it is the market alone which can deliver brave, worthwhile, independent journalism. Yet it was under just these conditions – the lightest of light touch regulation, minimal oversight and accountability, commercial considerations to the fore – that the catastrophe at the News of the World unfolded.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/james-murdoch-wrong-on-bbc

see toon at top...