Here Comes the Censor.

Back like a bad penny the phone hacking scandal has flared up again in the UK. If you've not been following this saga that has been dragging on for the best part of six years it involves the practice of dialling into someones telephone voice messaging service and listening to their messages by entering the PIN number. Throughout the 1990's this was a completely lawful act and was done by everybody, especially people who'd got drunk and left ill-advised messages to ex-girlfriends. Then in 2001 the practice was made illegal and if anything became more widespread. It is now done by all journalists, the police, private investigators, local councils, private security firms and even certain housing trusts. However the scandal only focuses on the actions of certain journalists at one specific newspaper, The News of the World.

Along with The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times The News of the World is part of News International which, in turn is part of News Corp - Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate which also own FOX in the United States. In Britain News International is currently trying to get British government permission for it's planned takeover of satellite broadcaster BSkyB which provides a variety of channels including Sky Sports, Sky News, Sky Arts, Sky Movies etc. That government permission is proving more then a little bit difficult to get with the Liberal Democrat (LibDem) party especially trying to make political capital out of Murdoch bashing. Just before Christmas the LibDem Business Secretary, Vince Cable was forced to resign his cabinet post after being secretly recorded assuring what he thought were voters that the BSkyB deal would never get past the supposedly independent broadcast regulator because he had "declared war on Rupert Murdoch." It was little surprise then that in January the broadcast regulator, OFCOM announced that it would be referring the matter to the fair trade regulator, OFT. The OFT have now basically told News International that they must re-submit their entire plan before it can be considered. The rumour is that for government permission to be granted BSkyB will have to hand editorial control of Sky News over to the government.

This would be a major problem because Sky News is one of only two free to air news channels in the UK. The other is BBC News which already has it's content significantly influenced by the British government. Since the coup/general election the quality of BBC News' output has dropped dramatically and the channel is looking less and less like a news service and more like a televised community centre for the presenters, the production staff and small group of loyal viewers.

Therefore the re-emergence of the phone hacking scandal is an attempt by the government to put pressure on News International in order to force it to give up editorial control of Sky News silencing one of the few independent voices left on British television. The decision for the story to be re-broken by the BBC's business editor at the World Economic Forum is an attempt for Britain to assess what, if any punishment it will recieve for a move that is hardly in line with the principles of free trade. Of course if you'd been relying on BBC News for your news you probably wouldn't have known that the World Economic Forum was going on.


In an unrelated Sky scandal two presenters with Sky Sports have been sacked for questioning whether a female referee was capable of knowing when something was off-side. This happened the day after Vincent Tabak was charged with the murder of Joanna Yeates. So while it's obvious that Andy Gray was never that popular with his colleagues I thought I'd covered this with the phrase "people have openly started to question why the British Crown thinks it's OK to kidnap and murder random members of the public."