Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
This week Labour MP Tom Watson and others made a fair amount of fuss on Twitter about ‘Blue Labour’s’ Lord (Maurice) Glasman intending to write for the new ‘Sun on Sunday’, Rupert Murdoch’s replacement for the disgraced News of the World.
Watson’s position seems to be that anyone associating themselves with the Sun or the Murdoch press is tacitly condoning their behaviour over phone hacking.
So firstly, should we as a party boycott the Murdoch press because of their behaviour over phone hacking? And secondly, if we did boycott the Sun on Sunday or other outlets, would the principled stance be worth the sacrifice of not reaching the audiences they serve?
What do you think? What should be the Lib Dems’ position on the Murdoch machine?
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23 Comments
No, the Murdoch machine is both malign & benign. The profits from the Sun effectively subsidises The Times stable and in recent weeks they have done great work in championing the cause of cycle safety. The Times remains a newspaper of record & both The Times & Sunday Times employs some good journalists (the late Marie Colvin being a fine example).
Sky News often breaks news in a more imaginative way than the staid BBC (another great female journalist, Alex Crawford, dispatches from Libya were gripping). Sky Arts brightens many an evening.
Love it (and many readers do) or loathe it, LibDems should not be so elitist & ought to read the Sun from time to time.
I am not boycotting the Murdch press because of phone hacking. I am boycotting his papers and his satellite channels because I believe his whole organisation has screwed up British politics and the British media.
I think we should not be the first to use this channel of communication. If it fails, let it fail. If it develops as a more principled publication than previously, re-consider. Even if the devil controls the post office, we still need to get messages of hope through to the people on the other side!
No we shouldn’t boycott all of NI – can appreciate why Liverpudlians don’t buy the Sun but the Time s is still good – I have a subscription.
As a party, no we should not boycott the Murdoch press. As an individual, I try to limit the amount of my money that goes to the Murdoch media empire. I’m sure many other party members do the same.
Not buying The Sun is one thing, but avoiding the Murdoch media empire completely is impossible. For example, MasterChef broadcast on BBC1 is made by Shine, a Murdoch company. Another part of our TV licence goes to BSkyB for carrying BBC channels. As a party, we could object to those re-transmission fees.
No. Boycotts seldom work, as we saw with attempts in the 1970s and 80s by labour councils to ban Murdoch papers from public libraries. All they did was deny taxpayers the limited knowledge they would have gained from the tabloids, and a lot of information from his broadsheets.
Leave it to peoples good taste — or otherwise. I shall buy the Sun on Sunday tomorrow, to put with the last Screws and other historic papers. Then am unlikely to ever buy it again.
Given the biased slant NI gives to anything lib Dems do, we might as well just boycott it altogether
Without a shadow of a doubt. And hang the consequences. Any mafia should be stood up to.
Wait, you mean some of you actually buy his brain rot?
@RMC “Love it (and many readers do) or loathe it, LibDems should not be so elitist & ought to read the Sun from time to time.”
Absolutely agreed. It’s virtually impossible to boycott the Murdoch machine anyway. You’d have a hard job weeding out Fox films and Sky Sports etc. No Simpsons?
I remember when we passed a boycott of French goods at a Glasgow SECC national conference, due to their testing of nuclear bombs under Pacific islands. 20 minutes after the boycott was passed, the party President, Robert MacClennan (bless him) broke the boycott (presumably unwittingly) by presenting the winner of Best Exhibition Stand contest with……….you’ve guessed it……..a bottle of champagne.
Boycotts make us feel good but are normally pointless.
Nope . Won’t buy it. Though I imagine millions will.
@mpg. Ditto. Totally agree.
As far as I know I’ve never bought a Murdoch paper or paid a single penny to Sky or any of its subsidiaries, so it would be hard for me to boycott them further even if I wanted to.
I have to be honest, I rather like the Times… sorry.
And whilst we’re on about reading what we have to rather than what we want to, let’s not forget about those beacons of impartiality and journalistic integrity the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Somehow I’ve always felt that the Sun and Screws were more honest.
You have to go some as a businessman before someone names their cancer after you.
The Sun often has interesting stories, presented differently from elsewhere, and interesting editorials. The selections and differences can help illuminate some of the prejudices in, for example, the Guardian or Independent, and can provide information about the culture of the several million Sun readers who are all potential LibDem supporters.
If the Murdoch machine is so prevalent, we need to study it, not pretend it doesn’t matter or walk by with our noses in the air! We can also use it to communicate to those potential voters, by providing pieces, stories, etc. But not the Sun on Sunday – that would send the wrong message right now.
If the Murdoch machine is so prevalent, we need to study it, not pretend it doesn’t matter or walk by with our noses in the air!
We don’t need to study it, we need to prosecute it. I want to regulate how much elected officials can be paid in the form of fees for newspaper columns, book advances and appearance fees for TV over and above the register of members interests which has proved to be ineffective. You can’t trust elected politicians or the media as far as you can throw a foam pie.
Regulation regulation regulation …, in the best LIBERAL tradition?!
Sun stories presented differently… prejudices of the Guardian and Independent, — er how do you know it is not the other way about? How do you know what to believe any more?
How many of you read the Liberal Democrat News, or do you rely on the big papers, with their inbuilt license to be partisan, for their version of what we are about?
Apparently a lot of Times readers are LD-Tory waverers. Don’t ask me why, but if this is so then we cannot afford to ignore them.
I don’t care about bias in NI titles, I care the integrity of our elected officials, ie Lawmakers, and the integrity of commissioned enforcers of the law. I’m sorry but being Liberal doesn’t mean assenting to live in a banana republic. I believe the Times defence has sunk to “sorry your honour, when I gave you that evidence I hadn’t read the email”.
On a personal level, yes I boycott the Murdoch empire where possible. I used to read the Times in my naive student days and to be honest I really liked their Opinion section – however now I do my best not to personally contribute any money to his machine.
However I feel it would be foolish for our party to boycott as plenty of people read what his companies have to tell them. We’re never shown in the best light anyway and we shouldn’t be cosying up to NI but we shouldn’t be completely blanking them – just make sure that they are properly punished for their breaches of the law and held to account for any future unethical behaviour.