Rupert Murdoch may or may not be an avatar of Lord Voldemort. It is evident, however, that the well-founded moral outrage about the crimes of reporters and others in the hacking scandal has overridden a fair question about concentration of media ownership. Blunt instruments and regulatory procedures do not comfortably coexist.
Mr. Murdoch has withdrawn News Corp.’s bid for all the shares of British Sky Broadcasting, forestalling what might well have been a unanimous resolution against it by the British House of Commons. In July, 2010, some MPs had already called for a debate on this subject in the Commons. That would have been the time for a referral to the Competition Commission, the British equivalent of the Competition Bureau in Canada. But in December, the European Commission gave its clearance to the share purchase, on the competition issue.
When the News of the World hacking scandal exploded last week, the politicians naturally leaped on it. By the time that Jeremy Hunt, the British Culture Secretary, referred the bid for BSkyB to the Competition Commission, on Monday, it was too late for a regulatory body to make a calm, dull assessment of whether there would be a “sufficient plurality of persons with control of media enterprises” if the purchase went through. Mr. Murdoch could hardly do anything but retreat.
The public is right to be shocked at deception, gross violations of privacy and bribery of police officers. All that matters much more than technical attempts to measure degrees of oligopoly and monopoly.
Criminal prosecutions should take their course, and vigorous moral condemnation should continue. Inquiries as to whether Mr. Murdoch or Darth Vader or Sauron is a “fit and proper person” to own any television or radio companies, in the words of the British Broadcasting Act, are less wholesome. New layers of regulation of the media are not needed or desirable when the relevant ethical principles are not mysterious. Administrative tribunals – as opposed to public opinion and, if need be, the courts – are not the way to influence the media for the better.