It’s not the Murdochs but the BBC that holds the real power in Britain

By Tim Montgomerie:

Where does media power really lie in Britain? Not with James and Rupert Murdoch: long before “hackgate”, and the pair’s unimpressive appearance before the Culture and Media Select Committee, the News International empire was in decline, as their newspapers lost sales and, with them, influence.

No, the real power is in the hands of the Murdochs’ arch-enemy: the BBC. When it comes to news, 73 per cent of us get most of it from television – and the BBC supplies 70 per cent of TV news. Its dominance is even greater when you factor in the high-end, high-impact programmes that shape the whole current affairs agenda: the Today programme, Newsnight, Question Time.

This dominance wouldn’t matter if the BBC provided fair coverage on all the big issues. But it doesn’t. It is actually a broadcaster with many obsessions. One is public spending cuts. Every morning, the Today programme provides a platform for anti-cuts lobby groups and misses the bigger picture, such as the fact that Britain is spending twice as much on EU bail-outs as George Osborne is saving from domestic cuts.

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