Machiavellian motives?

As Rupert Murdoch takes right-wing US channel Fox News off the air in the UK after 15 years, Raymond Snoddy asks: why now?

Several thousand fans – or at least viewers – of Fox News in the UK are in a state of shock today after the sudden, rude interruption of transmissions of the channel after 15 years.

Those who find the balance provided by British news broadcasters insipid at best and part of the ongoing socialist, pinko conspiracy at worst are thoughtlessly left with nowhere to go.

Fox News is not streamed online so unless excerpts are enough the only way in future for Britons to enjoy Fox News is to hop on a plane across the Atlantic.

If different news values are what you crave, and you are not too fussy about the particular flavour, there is always RT – Russia Today.

Naturally some suspicious political characters such as Tom Watson and Ed Miliband have wondered whether the timing of the pulling of the plug on Fox News just might have something to do with the fact that Culture Secretary Karen Bradley is in the final stages of making a big decision.

She has to decide whether to refer everything to do with Rupert Murdoch’s £11.7 billion takeover of all of Sky to the Competition and Markets Authority.

How could anyone imagine such Machiavellian motives for the Murdoch action?

After all, Sky insists that the channel had been closed down in the UK purely for commercial reasons and that the decision was not linked to the takeover bid.

Fox had decided “to cease providing a feed of the Fox News channel in the UK. Fox News is focussed on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interests to continue providing Fox News in the UK,” the Fox spokesman said.

The masterpiece of a statement does, however, beg a number of questions.

It was always a channel focused on the US market and designed for a US audience for all of its 15 years of British existence.

Did it ever average more than a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK or have the numbers always been so low? In fact with the joys of boosting the Trump Presidency you would have thought the channel should have rising potential if only for its comedic value.

Was it ever commercially viable and indeed was there any hope of it ever being commercially viable?

So who was it who suddenly noticed that it was aimed at American audiences and wasn’t commercially viable, now, above all times?

Just possibly the closure was more about depriving a handful of people of the ability to remind themselves on a daily basis what a wretched, biased, right-wing excuse for journalism Fox News actually is.

The closure means that Culture Secretary Bradley and the Ofcom regulators who have censured Fox News for breeches of UK broadcasting rules over the years will no longer be able to watch it or have any jurisdiction over it.

They will no longer be able to hear Fox News guests saying things like Birmingham was “a city where non-Muslims just simply don’t go”.

The hope that the physical absence of the channel in the UK will in time erase the memories of an outfit wracked at the top by sexual harassment scandals and putting out a fake news story, eagerly embraced by President Trump, about the murder of a Democratic party worker, Seth Rich.

Did Murdoch know in advance that the story was about to be published? Trump certainly did.

Certainly the founder of Fox has closely associated himself with the Trump Presidency and could suffer further reputational damage from TWEP – The Worst Ever President – as Trump heads for the buffers.

Murdoch may also come to regret his enthusiastic support for Brexit as that thoroughly bad idea continues to unravel on a daily basis.

It cannot be said often enough that Sky News is a completely respectable news channel that has no connection with Fox News other than, at the moment, the shared 39 per cent Murdoch ownership. Sky has always respected both British employment and broadcasting rules.

The loss-making channel would not exist if it were to be judged on purely commercial grounds.

Similarly The Times, by any standards a good newspaper in a difficult world for newspapers, would have long since gone but for the dogged support of Rupert Murdoch.

Yet the channel from across the Atlantic, which will be only marginally lessened by cutting Fox News adrift in the UK, should leave Bradley with an easy decision, not least for her own political advantage.

The public interest would be best served by a thorough investigation by the CMA if only to separate the myths from the reality and publish its findings.

By coincidence as the final preparations were being made to pull the plug on Fox News in the UK the chief investigative reporter of The Times, Andrew Norfolk, was breaking the story about the “white Christian child” who was forced to live with a niqab-wearing foster carer in a home where she was alleged to have been encouraged to learn Arabic.

In exposing the grooming of vulnerable English girls by mainly Pakistani men in the north of England Norfolk was accused of racism and anti-Muslim attacks and emerged vindicated.

There have also been doubts expressed about the strident language of the Times splash and its portrayal of the clash of two religions rather than the fate of a five-year old girl whose religious views can be only rudimentary at best.

Once again Norfolk has been vindicated – this time in the court of Judge Khatun Sapnara – a practising Muslim who not only refused to block publication of the story but then decided the child should go to her grandparents pending a full inquiry.

Judge Sapnara emphasised the priority should be “an appropriate, culturally matched placement” before noting that The Times had acted responsibly in raising “very concerning” matter of legitimate public interest.

So it’s congratulations to Andrew Norfolk and the Murdoch Times and good riddance to Fox News.