After a couple of years hammering on about the influence of Rupert Murdoch's News International it has now officially spilled out onto every ones doorstep. You literally cannot go a day without hearing about the latest skeleton to fall out of the 'Hackgate' closet.
As a child I remember my father telling me stories of how various news outlets changed their allegiance depending on which way the wind was blowing and as I grew it gradually became clearer what he meant. Now as I look back it seems even more obvious. Successive Governments came and went but a certain someone was never too far away. Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch's links to the New Labour Government have been well documented and for all the efforts of the latest Labour Leader, Ed Milliband, to hustle and unsettle David Cameron over his relationship with Rebecca Brooks and the appointment of Andy Coulson, it should not go unnoticed that he too has cosied up to Murdoch Senior and it is reported that he too recruited a former News International employee, Tom Baldwin, as his director of Strategy and Communications.
People in glass houses springs to mind.
I remember as a child the Lib Dems taking a pasting at the hands of The Sun, John Major had his turn getting bashed too, leading us to Tony Blair where it was difficult to see where he ended and Rupert Murdoch began. The cosy relationship these two power hungry moguls shared only briefly took a dip on Blair's obsession with Europe and the Euro, resulting in the Euro referendum which Blair did unwilling allow the public to have allegedly to appease Murdoch.
The media frenzy whipped up prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq is today a great example for the majority of the country of the power and influence of Murdoch's news empire, any one who has seen John Pilger's 'The War You Didn't See', I am sure would agree. If you have not then I suggest you do. It will make you look at the British Press in a totally different light. The documentary highlights the inept way the WMD scandal was dealt with and investigated (or not as the case turned out to be) and the duty that our media has to report, not repeat, these stories to and for us and where mistakes have been made.
The current hacking scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch and his news empire at the moment has given rise to a couple of new documentaries, one on BBC 1 by Panorama called 'Breaking the Spell' and another on Channel 4 by Dispatches called 'How Murdoch Ran Britain'. Both highly entertaining but for some of us not exactly breaking news, the speed of which they have been put together has been particularly interesting, with footage from the most recent enquiries appearing.
One thing I would like to know, or ask, is why has it taken until now for these documentaries to air on television?
People have got to start asking more questions of the world around them.
There will be of course a percentage of people that do not care because to them it is "just politics", there will be those that think it is important but that there are more important things going on in the world such as the American debt default crisis which is going relatively unnoticed and since I started writing this there was the tragic incident in Norway. As a student of history however, the power of propaganda and the effect the news can have in manipulating the population is of great importance.
Some people form all their opinions based solely on what they read in a daily rag, let us hope it does not include these readers.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3215759
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/feb/24/revealed-deal-between-murdoch-blair
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-murdoch-had-a-hotline-to-the-pm-in-the-runup-to-iraq-war-457825.html
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