Alex Salmond has been called on to end his “deferential” approach to the Murdoch empire and join other political parties in seeking a consensus about future media regulation and ownership, writes MICHAEL SETTLE
The call was made by Harriet Harman, the Shadow Culture Secretary, who is visiting the Edinburgh Festival today and will be in the audience tonight for the keynote MacTaggart Lecture given this year by Elizabeth Murdoch, chairwoman of the Shine TV production company, which is part of her father Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Three years ago, her brother James used the lecture to launch a scathing attack on the BBC in which he described its size and ambition as “chilling”, accusing it of mounting a “land grab” in a beleaguered media market.
Ms Harman said: “Everybody else will be recognising - notwithstanding Alex Salmond who does not appear to have woken up to this - that the age of deference to the Murdochs is dead and that really contrasts with the 2009 MacTaggart lecture by James Murdoch, where he said the guarantee of a free press is profit and he absolutely criticised the BBC.”
She insisted Ms Murdoch would be listened to but “they don’t run the show anymore...The game has changed; that is good”.
The Shadow Secretary of State went on: “The key thing will be what Cameron does and our ability to work across parties. If Salmond comes late in the day to recognise we all need to work together to end this age of deference then so much the better; it should be all parties working together on this.”
The First Minister hit back, with his spokesman saying: “This is utter hypocrisy from Harriet Harman. As submissions to the Leveson Inquiry show, Labour leaders have had 19 meetings with Rupert Murdoch since May 2007, compared to just five for Alex Salmond.
“The other problem for Harriet Harman and the Labour Party is that Gordon Brown said he was aware of and shocked at the activities of News International when he became Prime Minister in 2007, yet did nothing about it - just as the Operation Motorman report in 2006 detailing over 3000 breaches of data protection across a range of titles was ignored by Westminster.”
He added: “We support the police inquiries into such activities and we have supported the Leveson Inquiry to the hilt.”
Ms Harman stressed, in light of the forthcoming findings from the Leveson Inquiry on media standards, that this was a pivotal moment in not only getting a strong, independent press complaints commission but also putting a 20% cap on newspaper ownership; the Murdoch empire currently owns around 33% of Britain’s national press.
Labour’s deputy leader made clear that once the Leveson recommendations were published all the parties needed to come together to form a consensual way forward to protect press freedom but also to ensure there were strong safeguards in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
“The public wants a free press but a clean press, which is not something that should be a dividing line for any election or that any political party should take advantage because all parties have a stake in a free and fair press,” she added.
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