The Hunt becomes the Hunted

SImon Bannister

Ah the outraged cry of the vested interest. What a load of self-serving twaddle!

Start your own TV channel then, fund it through years of no revenue, boldly go for Digital, buy the content people want and deliver it to them at a profitable price people can afford, don't squeal for the Government to protect you from that horrid Mr Murdoch get out there and compete with him!

Also Warner, what rot, the richest broadcaster in Britain is the BBC and it is given it's money off the back of poor folk compelled to pay and fined if they don't it does not have to earn it like Sky does.

Without Sky we would have the same cosy cartel of BBC and ITV and snobs like Cohen could pontificate from their high horses and no nasty Mr M to upset them. Go Rupe!

Victor Southern

An article full of delusion, sanctimony and unfounded innuendo.

Most of us could not care less who owns or runs Sky News even if it is an obsession of the pretentious literati.

A lot of us would like to see a real 24 hour news service. The ones we are offered simply run recorded clips endlessly and often spend a whole day or two on one story.

I am old enough to remember when the BBC broadcast news, even-handedly and without painting a political slant on 70% of its content.

Colin

Deluded nonsense.

Head on back over to La La Land.

John HW

Great post Nick - spot on.

Which particular BBC bias are you referring to Victor? Presumably it's the current sycophantic and slavish line on the coalition-that-can-do-no-wrong. The Beeb has been actively and profoundly opposed to Labour and all its works for many years.

boulay

for christ's sake, there was only ever one outcome that the screeching left would accept so what was the point of a review. it is great to see the left living up to their usual standards "what we think is morally correct but anything else is sleeze and evil". it is just like the election where the left will not accept that the coalition has a mandate whereas if they had managed to form a coalition it would have been "the right thing to do".

as simon bannister writes - set up your own news channel, see if it lasts. i am sure if your views are shared by the majority of the population it will attract viewers and thus advertisers.

or is it a case where actually the silent majority in britain is slightly conservative hence the disparate circulation figures of the right-leaning press (mail, sun, express, times, telegraph) versus the left (mirror, guardian, indie). i imiagine that the choice of the masses of the right leaning press would be dismissed by cohen and friends as being misguided or perhaps even a sinister murdoch plot to brainwash people....

duc de montesquieu

Hunt always looks far too pleased with himself (with no justification, I hasten to add) to be taken seriously.

Just another chinless toff in the Cabinet, he is, like most, utterly disposable and there's a queue in waiting.

Victor Southern

John HW

Please let me know which BBC news programme you listen to. I have hardly heard the Beeb describe any policy or act of the Coalition in other than condemnatory terms. That extends to virtually anything - no union "survey" on cuts is too bizarre to be broadcast.

Do I hear or see BBC commentators condemning politically motivated strikes? Never.

Do I see or hear them [apart from Andrew Neal]comment favourable on any aspect of our foreign policy? Never.

Lady Astor's son-in-law

Most people couldn't care less.
Most people assumed Rupert Murdoch already owned 100% of Sky.
Chattering-class/media types & Lefties hate Murdoch (for being successful).
Yawn.

John HW

Victor - I'm still livid at the relentless Beeb assault on Labour that began pre-Iraq and continued with relentless and remorseless derision of the Brown Government and all its works. Lord knows, that Government had its huge deficits, but when you compare its treatment with that of the Coalition - all terribly polite - it is very marked

David Bouvier

What it shows is the unfitness of the left to be in government. The minister has a quasi-judicial process to operate to determine the outcome. There is no basis for the minister to consider what they want the outcome to be.

Give this kind of discretion to a Labour minister and it is very clear they will abuse it for political ends.

I hope that all the media outlets that formally opposed the merger will include conflict of interest notices with every report. As if.

Baron

John HW @ 5.52:

May I ask, you don’t have to be that specific, what your job is? I ask because only someone on Labour’s payroll could defend the comrades the way you do, blame the BBC for mistreating them. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. You are not blind, deaf and dumb into the bargain, are you?

John HW

You can certainly ask Baron - I am a management consultant: not a natural Labour type role I'm sure you'll agree. If you can't see the anti Labour bias of the appalling Beeb over the past few years, then the sensory deficits you ascribe to me belong more properly to you, I'm afraid

DavidDP

Warner, like pretty much every journalist, gets the regulatory regime wrong.

Hunt followed the law and the independent advice to the letter. What you seem to be suggesting Nick, is that he should not have done that because the media didn't like it.

I don't know about you, but I prefer my governments to follow the rule of law, rather than lie down in the face of media threats.

David Lindsay

Polly Toynbee uses her column in today's Guardian to call on Vince Cable to resign from the Cabinet in order to fight from the backbenches Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the rest of BSkyB. But Cable would be ideal as the new Chairman of Sky News, with the other independent national directors elected by and from among Sky subscribers, each of whom would vote for one candidate, with the requisite number elected at the end.

Who would they be? Well, we know who they would not be. Thanks, lest we forget, to the Thatcher Government no doubt much admired by his defenders on here, Murdoch is already subject to a regime of independent national directors elsewhere, which present events provide a golden opportunity to strengthen very considerably. There is no such babysitting of the man who owns four national newspapers and a terrestrial television station. But he is mere pornographer. It is not as if he is Rupert Murdoch. If you don't like it, then take it up with Margaret Thatcher.

Fergus Pickering

But John HW, saying Blair is a liar and Brown an arse is not bias. Everybody is of that opinion apart from their wives. Because it's true, don't you know?

Patricia Shaw

Correct Cohen.

1) james naughtie WAS right.

2) sunday times quickly thanked Hunt in the time honoured tradition with his own glorified full page personality profile on the first day of the Conservative Conference.

Says it all really.