Murdoch, BSkyB and a minor miracle

Jeremy Hunt was never going to win bouquets of praise over the Newscorp BSkyB merger, but he does appear to have pulled off a minor miracle.

By Charlie Beckett

Somehow, he has managed to satisfy both the media regulator Ofcom and Rupert Murdoch. Of course, those who fear the political and commercial consequences of a larger, more successful Newscorp - and they include many Conservatives - will accuse him of cowardice and a lack of foresight.

But by putting Sky News into the protective custody of an independent board with a decade of funding he has actually increased its autonomy while safeguarding a vital part of journalistic plurality in the UK.

Some of us might worry that Sky News will lose its pioneering, populist editorial vitality and its commercially-driven competitiveness in this semi-trust scenario but that's a marginal issue.

The negotiations appear to have been much more thorough and careful than the high-speed horse-trading Mr Hunt conducted with the BBC over its licence fee. One has to wonder whether Mr Cable would have been able to fashion this clever compromise.

Mr Hunt was clearly not prepared to 'go to war' with Murdoch, but why should he? Issues such as the News of the World 'phone-hacking' should be dealt with separately from the business questions.

By allowing the merger to go ahead Mr Hunt is giving Mr Murdoch an early 80th birthday present by avoiding a costly delay with the Competition Commission. But our research and discussion at POLIS has thrown-up few if any real grounds for stopping the merger on that basis.

The real political and policy problem lies in the future.

In the short-term there is the two-week consultation process during which the anti-Murdoch forces will vent their spleen. And they have a point. Has Murdoch honoured these kinds of agreements in the past in spirit and letter? How are they to be enforced? What devil is in the details?

In the longer term, there are bigger questions. Mr Hunt may not be at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when they come up, but it would be good if he could start addressing them now.

Firstly, there is the regulatory issue of how we manage decisions about media plurality in the future? It's clear that it's more of a political art than an economic or legal science. We need clearer benchmarks and a more flexible monitoring system that can cope with the new media environment.

Secondly, we must ask how do we live with a media industry dominated by two huge players, the BBC and Newscorp? Newcorp is a massive creative industries success story that should be welcomed not hampered. But as with any market, there needs to be a variety of substantial players. We can't rely on a big BBC as a bulwark.

If we are to have genuine media plurality, and not just in news, then Jeremy Hunt would do well to use this moment of controversy to engage in a debate that goes way beyond Kay Burley and her colleagues.

If nothing else, this issue has shown us the political, economic and cultural importance of the media industries and the need for even more transparent policy-making in this area.

Charlie Beckett is director of POLIS, the London School of Economics' media think-tank