News Limited, one of the major international media corporations was founded by Sir Keith Murdoch in the first half of the twentieth century. His son Rupert now controls a company with interests in tv, newspapers, magazines, movies, publishing and the internet. Murdoch has assets on every continent except for Antarctica.

*In 1985 Murdoch (An Australian) took out American citizenship to meet federal requirements governing the ownership of

the media.

*In the UK, News International has been the subject of several campaigns by other media conglomerates attempting

Murdoch gaining access to a terrestrial tv channel. (Channel 5)

*UK government and European Union policy on 'cross media ownership' has been widely perceived to have been

written to prevent NC gaining an even bigger share of national media markets. In 1998 Murdoch gave lectures on the need

for a more open media market.

*Through his 40 percent stake in BSKYB, Murdoch has been largely responsible for major changes in UK sports including, Premier

League Football, Rugby League and to al lesser extent Cricket. He also has exclusive deals involving rugby and cricket in Australia.

*BSKYB emerged as the front-runner in launching digital television services in the UK from satellite, promising News Corporation a central role in the next tv age.

*In the US, News Corporation used its ownership of Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox to develop a fourth tv network. Fox TV now rivals the ABC,NBC and CBS in the ratings.

*News Corporation is involved with various telecommunications companies in the US as part of a strategy to secure delivery systems for its film and video content.

*In Asia Murdoch has done deals with he Chinese government over news broadcasts and the expulsion of the BBC News service from Star TV, which he acquired the year before.

*In the UK News International, as owner of Times Newspapers waged a price war in the broadsheet market, losing $450 million, but dramatically increasing sales of The Times and threatening the long term security of its major competitor The Independent

*In 1992 it is thought that News International campaigns kept the Tory Party in power. By 1997 it placed its support behind Labor. In 1998 Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer) addressed the editors of all News Corporation papers in Ohio.

PROBLEMS

News' wipesread interests and dominance in a number of markets causes a number of problems.

The first is the erosion of a diversified media. If we take Adelaide as an example, the daily paper, the nationally available paper, the weekly paper and the suburban give away are all owned by News Limited. In addition one of the four commercial networks has a high level of investment from News (Seven). Further news Limited products, such as The Simpsons, X Files and the like are major primetime components of the programming of a second network (Ten). News Limited is very much controlled by Murdoch's business interests, what is good for News is usually given prominent space in the companies papers. A diversified media allows a range of viewpoints to be conveyed on a particular issue. A rigidly controlled media tends to focus on similar stories. The same story with no variations can and does appear in The Advertiser, Australian and Sunday Mail.

Control of the Media also leads to the suppression of some stories. Stories critical of Murdoch and his business practices tend to be either ignored by his papers or reduced in size and relegated to the inside pages. Even something as trivial as Murdoch's recent second marriage was not covered by his papers.

Dumbing Down. There is a tendency in a monopolized media market to reduce the news gathering resources of a company and increase things such as pictorial content, competitions and giveaways and advertising. For years The Sunday Mail has been the butt of jokes over the high number of pages devoted to Le Cornu advertisements. This is part of a pattern that has spread across all News Limited products. Why waste money if you have no competitions?

Political Interference. As we have already noticed it is thought that the attitudes and selections of stories displayed in News International's English papers played a strong part in keeping the Major Government in power in 1992. It is also apparent that News played a part in getting the Blair Government elected in 1997. In Australia it is thought that support from The Australian in particular helped lay the ground for John Howard's victory over Paul Keating.

For further discussion refer to handout Case Study News Corporation.