After Murdoch

Why has Murdoch not been declared persona no grata from the United Kingdom? How is a man who gave a job to Andy Coulson still Prime Minister, or even in public life at all? Why does Andy Hayman still hold any gongs that he might have been awarded during or at the end of a Police career which included being wined and dined by the company that he was investigating and which now employs him? And so on, and on, and on. Still, there is time yet. When the trials come, think of them as the trials of the Murdoch Empire's beloved satraps: Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and George W Bush. Any juror who ever disagreed with anything done by any of those three ought to vote to convict. That should take care of matters more than comfortably. One lives in hope that at some point Blair will be charged, tried and imprisoned as an accessory.

At least in Britain, we may now begin to speak of the Murdoch Empire as being of historical interest only. Most people, although we can obviously excuse many regular readers of this site from their company, think that the Daily Herald only became the Sun when Murdoch bought it. But there was a pre-Murdoch Sun, and even Auberon Waugh wrote for it. The Daily Herald, meanwhile, was at one time edited by George Lansbury, while both Chesterton and Belloc were known to write for it. It awarded the Order of Industrial Heroism, the medal of which was designed by Eric Gill of the Distributist League and of the Westminster Cathedral Stations of the Cross, and featured Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child. That at a time when the awarding newspaper was the official organ of the TUC, recalling all those Biblical scenes and characters on many a trade union banner. So the idea of the post-Murdoch Sun as a voice of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative patriotism is a superb one, both in itself and because of how it would also require the Mirror to go back to its own better days in order to compete.

Rupert Murdoch's most undesirable acquisition of the rest of BSkyB should not be the condition for the creation of a separate company for Sky News, with Independent National Directors. Vince Cable would be ideal as the new Chairman of Sky News, appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. The other Independent National Directors should be elected by and from among Sky subscribers, each of whom would vote for one candidate, with the requisite number elected at the end. And cross-subsidy being what it is (although even if it were not), they could very usefully double up as the, hitherto somewhat ineffective, Independent National Directors of The Times and the Sunday Times. This should happen regardless of whether or not Murdoch was even so much as still at liberty in this country.

More broadly, we need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station. To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.

And the television license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected. The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. The term of office would be four years. You would not need to be a member of the Trust (i.e., a license-payer) to listen to or watch the BBC, just as you do not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats.

Oh, and do people know about this latest story in America and Australia? Does anyone doubt that they would be as disgusted as we are if they were made aware of it?