Labour leader urges for new media ownership rules saying News Corporation chief has too much power in the UK
Ed Miliband has demanded the breakup of Rupert Murdoch‘s UK media empire in a dramatic intervention in the row over phone hacking.
In an exclusive interview with the Observer, the Labour leader calls for cross-party agreement on new media ownership laws that would cut Murdoch’s current market share, arguing that he has “too much power over British public life”.
Miliband says that the abandonment by News International of its bid for BSkyB, the resignation of its chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and the closure of the News of the World are insufficient to restore trust and reassure the public.
The Labour leader argues that current media ownership rules are outdated, describing them as “analogue rules for a digital age” that do not take into account the advent of mass digital and satellite broadcasting.
Categories: Recent Headlines, UK
Here are further developments quoted from CNN:
London (CNN) — The Watergate scandal saw the resignation of the president, the jailing of senior administration officials, the collapse of trust in the political class, a shift in the balance of power from one party to another, an increase in the reputation of the press and sustained pressure for freedom of information. All this took place over a period of years.
In just two weeks however, since journalists at the Guardian newspaper revealed that the News of the World had hacked into the cell phone of a murdered teenager, we have had the closure of Britain’s second best-selling newspaper, the resignation of two of the most senior police officers in the country along with the departure of top News Corp. executives, the abandonment of News Corp.’s bid to take over Britain’s largest satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the setting up of a major public inquiry into the ethics and regulation of the press and a political crisis that has rocked the media, police and political establishments.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/19/freedman.news.corp/index.html?hpt=hp_t1