MGEITF 2009: James Murdoch blasts the BBC and Ofcom

James Murdoch, News Corporation’s chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia, has attacked the BBC and industry regulation  in a speech at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Delivering the annual James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, Murdoch said the BBC is spear-heading a land grab where the “scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling”.

In an elongated plea for less regulation and a stripping back of the corporation, Murdoch said that “being funded by a universal hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered and obliged to try and offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market.

“This whole approach is based on a mistaken view of the rationale behind state intervention and produces bizarre and perverse outcomes. Rather than concentrating on areas where the market is not delivering, the BBC seeks to compete head-on for audiences with commercial providers to try and shore up support – or more accurately dampen opposition – to a compulsory licence fee.”

He went on to say that the BBC’s recent purchase of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet is a “particularly egregious example of the expansion of the state”.

Murdoch also criticised regulator Ofcom, saying that its assertions of its bias against intervention are “becoming impossible to believe in the face of so much evidence of the opposite”.

He reeled off figures showing that Ofcom has launched nearly 450 consultations in the past five years – nearly two every week – and produced reports totalling over five thousand pages, with another 18,000 pages of responses.

Rules governing broadcast news also came under fire. “The effect of the system is not to curb bias – bias is present in all news media – but simply to disguise it,” he said.

“We should be honest about this: it is an impingement on freedom of speech and on the right of people to choose what kind of news to watch. How in an all-media marketplace can we justify this degree of control in one place and not in others?

“Content control, advertising regulation and restrictions on freedom of speech. We have been brought up in this system. It probably seems as natural and inevitable as rainfall. But is it really necessary? Is there no alternative?”

Murdoch’s speech comes 20 years after his father Rupert slammed the BBC in his own MacTaggart Lecture.