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By Lord Puttnam - 5th November 2010
Lord Puttnam writes for ePolitix.com following his debate on media ownership in the UK.
This week I led a House of Lords debate which examined the case for maintaining a broad plurality of media ownership in the UK. Why does media plurality matter?
In proposing the original amendments on media plurality in the 2003 Communications Act we sought to ensure that there was proper recognition that diversity in the media is not reducible to a set of arguable facts regarding market share; that the issue is far too important to be expressed only in the language of competition policy. What is at stake is far more than an issue of consumer interests within an equitably functioning marketplace. It concerns the overriding interest of the citizen.
The primary reason for this week's debate was News Corporation’s plan to purchase the 61 per cent of BSkyB that it does not presently own.
The purchase of these shares would give News Corporation an unprecedented level of control over the UK media – one that has the potential to be extremely damaging, not just in respect of media plurality, but to informed, democratic debate as a whole. Not one peer spoke in favour of that deal in the debate.
When I entered the House of Lords in 1997, Sky had revenues of £1.27bn – just 63 per cent of the BBC's then income from the licence fee when combined with the net benefit it receives from BBC Worldwide. Assuming a modest five per cent growth in 2016, when the BBC's current charter expires, BSkyB will have reached a turnover of around £8bn, or approximately 220 per cent of the then projected total income of the BBC.
The level of media dominance that would result from News Corporation's ownership of 100 per cent of BSkyB, along with four national newspapers and a variety of other media assets, is one that would simply not be tolerated in almost any other developed democracy – certainly not in the United States.
Prime Minister Berlusconi controls a proportion of the broadcasting sector in Italy, but nowhere is there the same degree of cross-media dominance as is already the case in the UK.
Speaking last week to Peter Hennessy, soon to be a welcome addition to the Lords, he reminded me that it would be a mistake to regard this simply as a media issue, saying, "this is about nothing less than the nature of 21st-century sovereignty."
I believe that he is right. The United Kingdom is not a banana republic and we do ourselves no favours whatever by appearing to behave like one.
Lord Puttnam's debate on plurality of media ownership in the UK took place on Thursday 4th November.
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