Will Sky News be Foxified?

With Rupert Murdoch still sniffing around full ownership of BSkyB like a dog around a well marked lamp-post, and Ofcom seemingly open to relax broadcasting regulations left, right and centre, could Sky News become a UK equivalent to the much talked about Fox News in the USA?

Polly Toynbee of the Media Guardian takes an interesting, and very real look at the potential in such a development, something which would certainly change the broadcasting, and indeed the political landscape in the UK forever.

Here is an excerpt;

Hardly noticed, something else is stirring in the Murdoch undergrowth. Last week in the Sun Kelvin MacKenzie let the cat out of the bag. Not a domestic cat, but something feral. "In a few weeks' time I expect my colleague and friend Jon Gaunt to win a major victory in the high court which will change the radio and TV landscape." It will, he says, have far-reaching consequences "with broadcasters allowed to express views for the first time". "They might at last be able to make money out of news (at the moment they lose a fortune), just like Fox so successfully does in the United States." So that's the plan, just like Fox.

As a former Sun editor, MacKenzie knows what he's doing when he flies a kite for Murdoch. Fox News is Murdoch's highly successful shockjock TV station that has helped turn US politics toxic with ranting rightwing opinion abandoning any pretence of objectivity.

Gaunt was sacked from TalkSport radio for a stream of abuse against an unsuspecting Redbridge councillor. He called him a Nazi and then a "health Nazi" for screening out smokers when choosing families to place babies for adoption. Following complaints, Ofcom delivered a mild rebuke, recording a breach of the broadcasting code laid down by parliament. There was no suggestion of calling for Gaunt's firing: that was TalkSport's decision, which observers suggest had little to do with the Nazi row. But Gaunt saw it as his chance to defend his right to freedom of expression under the European convention on human rights.

Just pause here for a deep breath and consider the irony of this Europhobe and hater of the human rights act invoking European human rights law against the Broadcasting Act of our sovereign British parliament. Ofcom polices broadcasters so they obey the law requiring them to observe acceptable standards: this case turns on whether Ofcom weighed up freedom of expression against that duty. If Gaunt wins, case law would let presenters rant and rail more, sliding towards Foxification.

Murdoch has been gunning for Ofcom as the main obstacle to his ambitions: Kelvin MacKenzie is only one of many Murdoch journalists attacking the regulator.

Read more here.