So, Rupert Murdoch, via Fox, is trying to buy the 61% of Sky he doesn’t already own. The fact that he owns but a sizeable minority allows some of us to just live with it, put up with paying for Sky because the Dirty Digger doesn’t own and control all of it. But what if he did?
Colin Murray left TalkSport radio when Murdoch bought it. How could any Liverpool supporter do otherwise? What happens if Murdoch owns Sky Sports? What happens then?
Not just to me, but to Jamie Carragher, Jamie Redknapp, Graeme Souness, who work for Sky? What will happen if Murdoch owns it 100%? What will happen to Liverpool FC, whose manager Jurgen Klopp already refuses to speak to the Sun? Will any Liverpool player speak to Sky pre and post match? It’s getting tricky, isn’t it?
My conscience is more than pricked by subscribing to Sky. Just as it was when I worked for the DWP under Thatcher, Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith. As the conscience of any Paul Weller fan must be pricked by buying his records and buying tickets for his gigs, knowing the proceeds help him pay for private education for his children, a la Diane Abbott. Oh God this is getting messy now.
I am just hoping it doesn’t happen because I will be in a quandary. I’m locked into Virgin Media which pays Sky to host its programmes, knowing some of the money goes to the man who slandered the dead of Hillsborough, whose reporters hacked the telephone of a dead schoolgirl.
We will then surely see Sky News turn into a vulgar British Fox News, slanted the way of Murdoch politics. Sky News is as trustworthy as the BBC, possibly more so given the corporation’s propensity to actively promote Nigel Farage and the politics of the far right. (Please watch Question Time if you think I might be wrong. 28 UKIP MEPs, one Tory MEP and not a single MEP from anywhere else, including the remnants of Labour and the Lib Dems.)
You think the media is bad now? Wait until Rupert Murdoch snaffles Sky in its entirety.
