This last week has seen the clash of canteen culture, ethical disregard and political bullying in the News Corporation empire. Murdoch senior is locked in Wapping instead of the rarefied atmosphere of Davos; he must be furious, not only at the Ofcom decision, but phone hacking by his journalists, in pursuit of personality driven gossip, and exclusives to fill the pages of the News of the World.

Sexist language from overpaid commentators is another further distraction from getting total control of BSkyB. News today that half-yearly profits rocketed to £520 million make that an even greater prize.

This whole affair speaks to much wider issues about ethics and public accountability. For the Metropolitan Police its failure to take the hacking allegations seriously has led it to launch a fresh investigation.

On BBC News Channel former Scotland Yard assistant commissioner Brian Paddick, who believes his phone was hacked into by another newspaper, accused the force of running scared of the press:

“There is a whole media machine at New Scotland Yard, designed to try and make sure the police are portrayed positively in the media. The last thing the police want to do is to upset newspaper editors, which could result in biased reporting against the police.”

This comes hard on the heels of undercover police sleeping with climate change activists to get information.

Paddick’s accusation of running scared of the press echoes Tom Watson who said in a debate in the Commons last September that Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, refused three invitations to appear before the Standards and Privileges Commitee. She should be called, he suggested, as should Rupert Murdoch.

There is a “tawdry secret” said Watson – “MPs are scared of powerful newspapers”.

Fortunately for us Watson and the Guardian journalists haven’t been scared from pursuing an issue that is central to trust and public accountability. The myth that ownership doesn’t matter only ‘what works matters’ has been well and truly exposed.

Responding to Ofcom’s decision, Sky went on the attack accusing it of recasting the statutory formulation of the “media plurality” test and distorting the manner of the questions which it should have answered.

And then with more than a hint of ‘menace’ Jeremy Hunt was told:

“Sky submits that it is therefore particularly important that, in the present case, the Secretary of State should assess the ‘raw’ evidence summarised by Ofcom in its Report with an open mind, and by reference to a correct understanding of the relevant media plurality test.”

Instead of referring the bid straight away to the Competition Commission Jeremy Hunt rolled over and gave Murdoch snr. and jnr. more time to make their case. As a senior shadow minister told me:

“If Murdoch gets hold of yet more of the British media then heaven help those of us who believe in pluralist democracy.”

So the Tory-led coalition government has gone on its rampage and at the last minute demonstrated the shambolic nature of the cuts, or more correctly I should  imagine, Tory ideological calculation, the BBC was ambushed. Commercial opponents have long wanted to diminish the BBC and in the pages of the Daily Mail and News International its programming and its people come in for a battering. Even in the last few weeks there were complaints about the number of BBC people in Chile covering one of the truly great global stories.

The warning signs came with James Murdoch’s speech in Edinburgh which took the attacks to a different level. Pursuing News Corporation’s business interests, which sees profit in everything, he railed against the BBC’s brilliant web service and declared that the BBC was embarking on a land grab. This was all too much for the Murdochs; for them, the only empire that should grow is News Corporation.

James Murdoch argued:

“The BBC is dominant… Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC’s income is guaranteed and growing.”

And so you had it. Clear warning signs that took the BBC hierarchy a whole year to counter-attack with Mark Thompson’s speech in the same venue last August. Thompson didn’t go all out with guns blazing but he did make an important, and with today’s news, prescient point:

“A pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of [the] UK creative economy. Once gone, it will be gone forever.”

It was a defiance that lasted all of a three months. Faced with government battalions, he waved the white flag. The Corporation will now have to pay for the BBC World Service previously paid for by the Foreign office. And the licence fee is frozen for six years. Osborne also gave Rupert and James what they wanted – a commitment from the BBC to spend less on its website.

And calls for the BBC to go down the subscriptions route have already begun. It must be avoided at all costs. The consequence of the ambush has meant that public service is no longer regarded as a public good. The BBC fat cats with their bloated salaries lived high on the hog and it has weakened them; ideologically-driven Conservatives have seized the economic crisis to knock back the BBC – and it only took 48 hours.

Media barons and media moguls are descriptions of bygone days, neither of which adequately fit Rupert Murdoch and son James. For the Murdochs are all-powerful global giants, and they have struck at precisely the right time. An economic liberalising coalition government will not step in to put a halt to News Corporation’s plans for total control of BSkyB.

As Professor James Curran recently wrote on the Open Democracy website:

“One consequence of the current quiescence is that media conglomerates have been able to persuade governments around the world to ease monopoly controls. In the 1980s, lobbyists argued that these were redundant since the advent of new communication technology would lead to the break-up of media empires.

“Now the argument is more frequently heard that media ‘consolidation’ is necessary for success in the competitive global marketplace. This shift symbolises the way in which successful media giants have so far weathered the storm of increased competition, and won increased acceptance in the era of market liberalism.”

This bid of BSkyB comes only two weeks after Virgin TV channels were bought. We now have huge swathes of communications – newspapers, television, broadband - under the control of the Murdoch empire. Those early battles against cross party ownership and the unfair advantage that would ensue appear almost quaint.

So who is left to hold News Corporation to account? The prime minister has already promised an Ofcom where its remit will be restricted to its narrow technical and enforcement roles; it will no longer play a role in making policy.

So will it be the culture, media and sport select committee whose chair, John Whittingdale, said after James Murdoch’s infamous Edinburgh speech attacking the BBC and Ofcom that much of what he said was “natural Conservative territory“?

Maybe each of the Labour leadership candidates could be asked:

“Will you put a halt to this concentration of power?”

It is often said that ownership doesn’t matter, but having this media information control does matter. And as we know Rupert Murdoch wants to introduce Fox-style news here. Thus far he has been thwarted by our impartiality rules, but how long might it be before a Glen Beck is denigrating the airwaves?

David Cameron’s contention that he is “the most pro-BBC Conservative leader there’s ever been” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There is only one test as to whether or not he is pro- BBC and that is what would he do with the licence fee. During Cameron’s austerity phase, when he and the Tories were salivating over cuts in public spending and cuts in the state, the licence fee was firmly under threat.

At that time Cameron, as he is now doing in the Radio Times, maintained that he supported the BBC, it was a ‘fantastic cultural asset’ which had to ‘prosper’ he said. Yet he wanted to freeze the licence fee immediately. According to the BBC Trust this would mean £80 million in unplanned cuts.

Of course we now know that the BBC capitulated to the Murdoch Empire after complaints that its free website which was outs-tripping its commercial competitors had dislocated the media market. So cuts were put in train as were plans to chop the popular radio station 6 Music and the Asian network.

The BBC blinked first and now with a general election that is ferociously unpredictable and one where Murdoch’s influence has been reduced, perhaps they wished they hadn’t. Life was so simple before this election campaign threw everything into a state of flux. The price for Murdoch’s support to get him into No 10 Cameron was to turn Ofcom into a toothless tiger thus paving the way for a Fox style news.

The BBC would be diminished and Murdoch, possibly junior, would be able to take over his dad’s the role in British politics. As Lance Price when he was working in Downing Street put it Rupert was the 24th member of the Cabinet, rarely heard but whose presence was always felt.

If it wasn’t so serious it would be a delicious irony that it was Murdoch’s empire that pushed for the TV debates. No doubt assuming that a former spinner for ITV would be able exploit his knowledge of television on his way to the premiership. Cameron proclaiming that he is pro-BBC could be his revenge for Cleggmania.

Emboldened by the BBC’s capitulation to Rupert Murdoch with its commitment to slash the number of journalists employed providing content for its terrific website, he has done it: from June this year, The Times and The Sunday Times will no longer be free online. The BBC had acted as a barrier to Murdoch’s ambitions to charge for the web. With the barrier breached others are waiting with baited breath to see if it will work.

Let’s get one thing straight: the decline of newspaper sales is a structural problem – the internet is merely a component. As John Nichols has written in The Nation:

“Blame has been laid first and foremost on the Internet, for luring away advertisers and readers, and on the economic meltdown, which has demolished revenues and hammered debt-laden media firms. But for all the ink spilled addressing the dire circumstance of the ink-stained wretch, the understanding of what we can do about the crisis has been woefully inadequate.“

Charging for content is not the answer. While, unlike America, we have more of a spread of newspapers. The Guardian, albeit protected as it is from its Trust status, provides quality alternative coverage. Nevertheless as consumers of news we can ask why did our journalists, with some honourable exceptions, fail so miserably in forecasting the global economic crisis? Could it be that it was in the media bosses’ interests to go along with the orthodoxy of an unfettered free market?

Likewise the line on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was bought hook line and sinker with Murdoch’s titles in particular all supporting the war.

There has been an economic decline in newspapers, there has also been a decline in content exacerbated by cost cutting in the number of journalists employed. Critical inquiry on the two of the defining issues of our times went absent without leave. Arguably, while newspapers become views papers, then people may want to pay for comment. The specialist information of, say the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, would be worth paying for.

But who under 30 is going to pay for general news? As the House of Lord select committee on communications reported:

“Younger people are less likely to read a newspaper than any other age group. The figures we [the select committee] commissioned from the National Readership Survey showed that overall the number of people reading any one or more of the top ten national newspapers on an average day has declined by 19% (between 1992-2006), but this decline is much more marked in the younger age brackets.

“The number of 15-24 year olds reading any one or more of the top ten national newspapers on an average day has declined by 37% and the number of 25-34 years olds doing the same has declined by 40%.”

And young people, used as they are to free content online, won’t start paying now.

This week has also seen another twist in media ownership with Andrei Lebdev buying the Independent. With perfect timing on the day Murdoch announces he is going to charge for website content it is being asked whether Mr Lebedev’s Independent may follow the Evening Standard, and become a free-sheet. The Independent, despite Murdoch’s predatory pricing that once was used to try and strangle competitors, survived.

And while at times it has had to cling on for dear life, it has survived through journalistic content that provides alternative opinions. Reform of media ownership is back on the agenda. Trying to get people to pay for content and access to information on the Internet is not the model we should be following.

With the election outcome looking less certain by the day, BBC bosses have chosen an odd moment  to pre-spin an announcement due next month on their strategic review. They have clearly been spooked by attacks from News Corporation and other vested interests, and capitulated.

Today’s Times reports:

“The BBC will close two radio stations, shut half its website and cut spending heavily on imported American programmes in an overhaul of services to be announced next month.

“Mark Thompson, the Director-General, will admit that the corporation, which is funded by the £3.6 billion annual licence fee, has become too large and must shrink to give its commercial rivals room to operate.”

News Corporation had complained that the BBC digital expansion had dislocated the media market and that commercial players could not compete. Put another way, Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for online content but cannot do so while the BBC is producing a free website that outstrips its commercial rivals. As a result, 25 per cent of the staff who work on the BBC’s fantastic website are to pay the price and face redundancy while popular stations like 6 Music are facing the chop.

The origins of this appeasement to the Murdoch Empire, which will be seen as an attempt to curry favour with an incoming Tory government looking to threaten the BBC licence fee, are from James Murdoch’s speech to the Edinburgh Television Festival last August. Murdoch Jnr. accused the BBC of a “land grab” causing the Director General, and others at the top, to take fright.

The beeb has been weakened by revelations that more than 100 of the BBC’s senior staff earn £21.2 million exacerbated with over-the-top expenses. While financial hubris has been demonstrated with their expansionist plans – not least in going over budget on the rebuild of Broadcasting House. And by letting BBC worldwide buy Lonely Planet. This sense of entitlement has meant they’ve been subjected to similar coverage to that meted out to MPs.

All this makes defending the BBC harder to do. Yet defend it we must if we want to protect a public service media. A universal licence fee means that the BBC has to provide a service for everyone and one that everyone wants. Otherwise the cry will go up to scrap the licence fee. A diminished BBC is what its detractors want. Bad political judgement and financial mis-management in the past is what Mark Thompson seems intent on delivering.

When, with impeccable timing, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper came out for David Cameron and blighted Gordon Brown’s big conference speech, it was an easy enough to assume that this was reward for past promises. The most important being the Tory leader’s commitment that a future Conservative government would restrict Ofcom’s remit to a narrow technical enforcement role, stripping it of its policy making role and knocking it back to “regulating lightly.” Ofcom, as we knew it, would cease to exist.

Cameron had come to the aid of the Murdochs when Ofcom had had the timidity to criticise Sky’s monopolistic control (80 per cent of Premier League football and 100 per cent of Hollywod movies prevented others from entering the market). Ofcom ruled that Sky be required to sell its rights to all comers at 30 per cent less than it currently charges.

Today that screw has been tightened. The Guardian is reporting that BT and Virgin expect to take advantage of Ofcom’s plans to force Sky to drop the price it charges rival broadcasters for its Sky Sports channel.

The timing is again impeccable. With a formal announcement in March, it’s just in time for the 2010/11 Premier League football season which also makes it weeks away from the General Election. If the opinion polls are anything to go by this would leave a Prime Minister Cameron having to overturn the independent regulator’s decision or upset the Murdoch empire. They will play for time through the courts if necessary and Ofcom will eventually pay the price.

With an election, and a possible change of government more sympathetic to their thinking, only weeks away those politicians and groups that have longed wanted to let the free market rule are preparing the ground. Policy Exchange’s report, ‘Changing the Channel’, out last week
argues that, with technological changes and increased competition, public service broadcasting belongs to the past.  It is no longer viable, they argue, for the major terrestrial to be obliged to comply with a public service remit. Spectrum once scarce does not need to be managed.

That the word is changing with the British media now exposed to increased competition as a consequence of the growing integration of globalised communications there is no doubt.  But this is not a reason, it’s an excuse. Free market ideas have been the main driving force shaping media policy and pressure groups and neo-liberal think tanks such as Policy Exchange and the Adam Smith Institute have long wanted the BBC broken up.

Public service obligations and regulation are anathema so it’s not surprising that they are capitalising on the changing media landscape, technological and the economic problems of ITV to pursue their aims. Strip ITV of any public service remit and privatise Channel Four.

Authors of ‘Power without Responsibility‘ now in its seventh edition, James Curran and Jean Seaton, in a revised chapter on media reform. Democratic choices, seek to highlight the way in which media politics is no longer purely national – the exclusive concern of national government:

“It is not something that can be left safely to specialists, powerful lobbies and politicians who – unexposed to public pressure – will tend to curry favour with media magnets.”

The Tories will be presented with an early test over Ofcom we can expect the unholy alliance between Cameron and Murdoch (and it has to be said with Blair beforehand) will eventually benefit News Corporation on ownership and regulation but it won’t be rushed – it will evolve over time unless it can be resisted.

Our guest writer is Joy Johnson, a lecturer in journalism at City University and a former political journalist.

With a media facing economic and technological changes, many requiring political solutions, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom is holding a conference on Saturday 31 October which will address key issues of ownership and regulation.

The conference comes at a crucial time in the political cycle. Unless Labour mounts a major fight-back instead of the debilitating fatalism that it is currently wallowing in – the Conservative lead in the opinion polls make it look odds on favourite that they will be shaping the future. Switching the focus to the public sector away from the dismal failure of the bankers is a triumph of Conservative propaganda aided and abetted by their allies in the media.

This forms the background for the continued assault on the BBC. But despite the unacceptable salary levels of executives and so-called ‘talent’, along with the decision not to broadcast the DCMS appeal for Gaza, the BBC needs defending. After all, it is not, as James Murdoch chillingly called it in his MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, “state sponsored journalism.”

David Cameron wants to freeze (and cut?) the licence fee and Ben Bradshaw wants to top slice it and hand over large sums of money to commercial operators.  At a stroke universality will be destroyed, and free-to-air broadcasting undermined. There are other alternatives.  The unions have suggested a levy on the profits of those who produce no public service broadcasting or companies that reap benefit from re-transmitting public service content.

While the CPBF conference will discuss the domestic media landscape, it will also have an international perspective. The first plenary session will hear from John Nichols, Washington Correspondent for the Nation and co-founder of Free Press, the US media reform network. He is joined by Professor Alexander Stille from Columbia University who has written extensively on Italian history and recently carried out a three hour interview with Silvio Berlusconi. The third speaker is Dr Katharine Sarikakis from the Institute of Communication Studies at Leeds University. Her work focuses on the political and economic dimensions of media and communications policies, nationally and globally.

Throughout the day there will be sessions on the enormous changes in the media including the crisis in local news, digital convergence, and ‘citizen journalism.’ Some commentators are celebrating the liberating democratic potential of the Internet, and welcome what they  see as the end of the old Fourth Estate.  There will be a session to ask – Are they right?