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How politically important is Rupert Murdoch? After more than half a century of his manoeuvrings, carefully and tellingly itemised in this book, it may seem naive even to ask the question. Only last month, to the alarm and perhaps hidden satisfaction of Murdoch-watchers, the supposedly infinitely manipulative magnate held dinners on successive nights at his London home in Mayfair, attended by Boris Johnson, George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove - the full set of pretenders, declared and otherwise, to David Cameron's unstable Tory throne.

Yet recent events have undermined the conventional wisdom that Murdoch is omnipotent. Last year there was his cheerleading for Mitt Romney - "looking better and better while Obama seems devoid of anything new", Murdoch tweeted 11 days before Obama comfortably won re-election. In 2011 there was Murdoch's unprecedented televised calling to account over the phone-hacking scandal by a committee of mere MPs. This autumn, there are the scheduled phone-hacking trials - probably the first of many - of Murdoch's once-vital British lieutenants and political liaisons, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. And then there is the ongoing, less sensational but more significant, unravelling of faith in the free market - a faith fiercely held by Murdoch and relentlessly spread from his media citadels for 40 years - since the financial crisis began in 2007.

Murdoch turns 82 next month. His mother, Elisabeth, died last December at the age of 103. "So far there is no sign of Rupert Murdoch genuinely stepping aside" from his intertwined political and business activities, McKnight writes. But this book, despite its subtitle, is more about Murdoch's past than his present. It wants to be a polemic but sometimes reads more like an obituary.

The main arc of the story begins in Australia in the 1950s. McKnight has already sketched Murdoch's early biography: a wealthy, influential father with anglophile tastes; an ambitious, frustrated stint at Oxford university, where Murdoch "stood for the secretaryship of the Oxford Labour Club but was ruled ineligible because he openly campaigned for votes". But the book is less interested in his life story and business ascent than most Murdoch volumes, and clearer and more pacy as a result. Its subject is political leverage: how Murdoch got it, exercised it, got more of it.

McKnight, who is a professor of journalism at the University of New South Wales, and was a leftwing newspaper and TV reporter for decades before that, shows that Murdoch was surprisingly clumsy and erratic in his early politicking. In Australia and then in Britain, he hastily fell for and then rejected party leaders, changed his mind on policy questions, and swung from left to right and back again, or sometimes even in both directions at once. During the 1972 British miners' strike, Murdoch's Sun, as he later put it, "pushed public opinion very hard behind the miners"; almost simultaneously, in Australia, he was allegedly complaining to one of his editors about "long haired stuff in the paper ... bleeding heart stuff ... Aboriginal stuff ... Aboriginals don't read our papers."

The usual interpretation of Murdoch's fickleness is as a skilful hedging of bets. During the 1980 US presidential election, Murdoch's New York Post, one of his loudest political megaphones, endorsed Jimmy Carter as the Democratic candidate in the New York primary, days after the two men had had lunch. "When asked by a friend how the Carter lunch had gone," McKnight writes, "Murdoch is said to have replied: 'Very good, but he is going to get a hell of a shock when I support Reagan [for president].'"

Murdoch has a weakness for self-styled national saviours, whether of the right like Reagan or the left like Gough Whitlam, Australia's iconoclastic Labour prime minister in the mid 70s. In 1967, Murdoch hired Whitlam's private secretary, John Menadue. In 1999, long after leaving the tycoon's service, Menadue wrote of Murdoch: "He was, and still is, a frustrated politician." On Australia Day in 1972, Murdoch made a speech identifying "the rebirth of a vigorous Australian nationalism, something that has lain dormant for most of this century - to the heavy detriment of Australia's progress and enlightenment." The social generalisations certainly suggest a would-be politician; the ponderous, slightly old-fashioned language possibly suggests why he never became one. The impatience and contempt with which Murdoch sometimes treats politicians may be rooted in frustration. He has never done a Berlusconi.

McKnight extracts most of his Murdoch quotes and facts from easily available sources: other Murdoch books, pieces in Murdoch newspapers, memoirs by former Murdoch underlings. Yet the portrait he builds feels fresh and strong, free of the usual biographers' ruminations on the Murdoch mystique and their love/hate feelings towards him. Sometimes the book is a little stark and skeletal as a result, a 260-page charge sheet, calmly but relentlessly laid out. Only occasionally does McKnight allow himself some descriptive colour, such as a Bond villain image of Murdoch in 2003 watching the invasion of Iraq, for which his papers had lobbied for almost a decade, "on the panel of seven television screens mounted in the wall of his Los Angeles office".

Murdoch moved decisively rightwards from the mid 70s, as the free-market revolution began to achieve critical mass across the west. He turned against Whitlam and Carter, and Labour and the unions in Britain. Significantly for British readers, and perhaps deflatingly for some British rightwingers, McKnight shows that radical American Republicanism had more influence on Murdoch than radical British Conservatism. From Richard Nixon's angry, embattled presidency, he took the notion that a "liberal elite" - rather than a rightwing business elite made up of people like Murdoch - dominated western democracies. From Reagan's much more successful political formula, Murdoch borrowed shrill anti-communism, a sometimes glib optimism about capitalism and a belief in America's right to world supremacy. In 1985 he became an American citizen.

His admiration for Margaret Thatcher was less total. According to McKnight, "Thatcher and Murdoch had a deep mutual regard, more sincere on her part than his." When she deviated from what he saw as the true path of modern conservatism, he could quickly turn critical or disloyal - despite her crucial support for his commercial expansions, such as his controversial takeover of the Times in 1981. In 1983, her lack of enthusiasm for the American invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, a tiny Commonwealth territory claimed by the Reagan administration to be a major, Soviet-aligned security threat, caused Murdoch to fume that she had "run out of puff", "gone out of her mind", and was not "listening to her friends". Even after Thatcher crushingly won her third general election in 1987, Murdoch flirted with other rightwingers: he gave what McKnight describes as "secret financial support" to David Hart, the late, well-connected British political adventurer, who used a column in the Times from 1983 to 1989 to call for such neoliberal dreams as the privatisation of all state education.

The book lays out well how Murdoch transmits his political desires, both within his conglomerate, News Corporation, and far beyond. The eerily consistent ideology of his newspapers and TV commentators is maintained in a lovely, menacing phrase quoted here from a former Murdoch editor, Eric Beecher, "by phone and by clone". Executives are chosen for their ability and willingness to anticipate Murdoch's thinking. On the rare occasions that more direct guidance is needed, "I give instructions to my editors all around the world," as Murdoch put it in 1982.

Meanwhile, a slightly more subtle political pressure is exerted on the outside world through cooperation between Murdoch media and rightwing think tanks, and through support for chosen candidates, which sometimes goes well beyond the journalistic. In 1980, McKnight writes, Murdoch backed Reagan's presidential bid by "meeting his aides to discuss maximising the Republican vote in traditionally Democratic New York. An important part of this was Murdoch's alliance with New York Democrat mayor Ed Koch ... "

Frustratingly but probably wisely, McKnight offers no firm conclusion about the precise electoral impact of the Murdoch machine, such as the Sun's notorious assault on Neil Kinnock and Labour in 1992. But he points out that the machine's mere existence can drag policy debates to the right: even anti-Murdoch voters and politicians, and non-Murdoch journalists, are forced to take his positions and mindset into account.

Yet when his thinking grows too extreme or eccentric - the curse of many a little-challenged media magnate - his influence diminishes. In the late 80s Murdoch's dogmatic anti-communism made him totally misjudge the reformist Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev: "a worthy heir to Stalin", with "nothing new going on" in his policies, concluded a New York Post editorial in 1987. Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev regardless. For a time, post-cold war American politics seemed to baffle Murdoch, too. In the 1988 presidential election, he vainly favoured the erratic TV evangelist Pat Robertson as the Republican candidate. In the 1992 contest, he abandoned the Republicans for the independent Ross Perot, who came third. Even in Britain, in the 90s there were hints that the Murdoch era might be drawing to a close. Thatcher's successor, John Major, was increasingly appalled by Murdoch's commercial and political power and wanted to diminish it: "If I had a majority of 150," he said privately in 1995, "I would crush Rupert Murdoch and make sure he had no newspapers at all."

But Murdoch's vulnerable phase did not last long. In 1996 he launched Fox News, with its fiery round-the-clock readings of the conservative gospel, and his influence on American politics was reborn. In 1997 Tony Blair was elected, his government considerably less hostile to Murdoch than Major's, and Murdoch lent it strong, if conditional, support. In 2010, shortly after Murdoch had switched his allegiance back to the Tories, Blair became godfather to one of Murdoch's children.

For all the outward, often blatant signs of Murdoch's influence, there remains an opaqueness to his political role. Partly this is a sign of his status, and of the congruence between his thinking and that of so many western politicians during the long free market ascendancy from the 70s to the 00s. McKnight quotes the former Australian prime minister Paul Keating: "You can do deals with [Murdoch] without ever saying a deal is done."

But there is a deeper mystery about him. What sort of political animal is Murdoch really? A crafty player of the game for its own sake; a self-interested businessman simply seeking more corporate freedom; a restless seeker after heroes and ideological certainties; a chippy anglophobe; a rebel against an establishment father; or just a powerful, opinionated man surrounded by unquestioning courtiers, a little like Prince Charles? Murdoch is probably a bit of all these, and McKnight doesn't ever quite establish the respective proportions. But as an anatomy and record of the reign of Murdoch this book is brave and valuable. And one day, when Murdoch is gone, it will help explain why so many obeyed him.
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Murdoch's Politics: How One Man's Thirst for Wealth and Power Shapes Our World by David McKnight - review

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How politically important is Rupert Murdoch? After more than half a century of his manoeuvrings, carefully and tellingly itemised in this book, it may seem naive even to ask the question.

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It said that if News Corporation owned all the shares, its UK group would be even larger and more powerful - and its news operations, including Sky News, could work more closely together.

Fears have also been expressed that Sky News could be turned into a right-wing, opinionated service like Fox News in the US - though Sky's own executives oppose this, believing that impartiality in news is a strength.

Rival media owners, including leaders of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail groups, the BBC, BT and Channel 4, wrote to Mr Cable urging him to refer the deal to regulators, on the grounds that the "proposed takeover could have serious and far-reaching consequences for media plurality".

Now the decision has been taken out of Mr Cable's hands and given to Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt who is more favourably disposed to Rupert Murdoch and his company.

On his website, the minister reproduces an interview in which he said Mr Murdoch had "probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person, because of his huge investment in setting up Sky TV which, at one point, was losing several million pounds a day".

Mr Hunt has also said many people believe the Murdoch empire already controls BSkyB, and question whether a full takeover would make much difference. Some say this means he is almost certain to approve the bid - but he was careful to add he was not prejudging the issue, on which he will be advised by Ofcom.

Once again, the future of a major Murdoch takeover is in the hands of a government minister. We will know the outcome in the new year.

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Analysis: Murdoch and media ownership in UK

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What are the issues and controversies around media ownership in the UK, following Vince Cable's comments on Rupert Murdoch?

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand:

trends and patterns in ownership and control of a range of mass media

the theoretical perspectives on the relationship between ownership and control of the media

Trends in ownership and control KEY POINT - Recent trends in media ownership and control suggest that the number of companies controlling global mass media has significantly shrunk in recent years. Bagdikian (2004) notes that in 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the USA, but by 2004 media ownership was concentrated in seven corporations.
Curran (2003) notes that ownership of British newspapers has always been concentrated in the hands of a few powerful 'press barons', e.g. in 1937 four men owned nearly one in every two national and local daily newspapers sold in Britain. Today, seven powerful individuals dominate the ownership of British national daily and Sunday newspapers.

The content of commercial terrestrial television is mainly controlled by one company, ITV plc, whilst access to satellite, cable and digital television in Britain is generally controlled by two companies - News Corp, (owned by Rupert Murdoch) which owns BSkyB, and Virgin Media (owned by Richard Branson).
Global conglomeration KEY POINT - The major difference in media ownership and control compared with forty years ago is the movement of media corporations into the global marketplace. The major media companies are now global conglomerations - transnational corporations (TNCs) with a presence in many countries.
Horizontal and vertical integration
Ownership and control of the mass media is a complex business as the following examples illustrate. Some media companies are characterised by horizontal integration or cross media ownership - this refers to the fact that global media corporations often cross media boundaries and invest in a wide range of media products. NewsCorp, for example, owns newspapers, magazines, book publishers, terrestrial and satellite television channels and film studios in several countries.

Some media companies have focused on increasing economic control over all aspects of the production process in order to maximise profits, e.g. film corporations not only make movies, but distribute them to their own cinema chains. This is referred to as vertical integration.

Diversification, synergy and technological convergence
Some media corporations are not content to focus on media products, but have diversified into other fields. The best example of this is Virgin which began as a music label and record shop chain, but has expanded into a wide range of products and services including cola, vodka, banking, insurance, transport, digital television, cinema and wedding dresses.

Media companies often use their very diverse interests to package or synergise their products in several different ways, e.g. a film is often accompanied by a soundtrack album, computer game, ring tone or toy action figures. A company may use its global interests to market one of its own films through its television channels, magazines and newspapers in dozens of countries at the same time.

Technological convergence is a recent trend which involves putting several technologies into one media product. Companies that normally work in quite separate media technology fields are joining up or converging in order to give customers access to a greater range of media services across technologies such as interactive television, lap-tops, MP3 players and mobile phones.
Theories of media ownership and control KEY POINT - Doyle (2002) suggests that examination of ownership and control patterns is important for two reasons.

All points of view need to be heard if society is to be truly democratic.

Abuses of power and influence by elites need to be monitored by a free media.

Doyle argues that too much concentration of media ownership is dangerous and unhealthy because the media have the power to make or break political careers and have a considerable influence over public opinion.

The pluralist theory of media ownership
Pluralists argue that media owners are generally responsible in the way that they manage information because media content is mainly shaped by consumer demand in the marketplace. They therefore only give the buying public what they want. Moreover, editors, journalists and broadcasters have a strong sense of professional ethics which act as a system of checks and controls on potential owner abuse of the media.

Pluralists suggest that the mass media are an essential part of the democratic process because the electorate today glean most of their knowledge of the political process from newspapers and television. Pluralists argue that owners, editors and journalists are trustworthy managers and protectors of this process.

Furthermore, pluralists argue that media audiences are the real power holders because they can exercise the right to buy or not to buy. If they did not like the choices that media owners are making available to them, or if they suspected that the media product was biased, such audiences would respond by not buying the product. The media, therefore, supply what the audience wants rather than what the owner decides. If some viewpoints have a greater range of media representing them, this is not necessarily biased. It merely reflects what the audience wants or views as important.

Pluralists also argue that concentration of ownership is a product of economic rationality rather than political or sinister motives. It is driven by the need to keep costs low and to maximise profits. Globalisation too results from the need to find new audiences rather than from cultural imperialism.

Pluralists argue that it is practically impossible for owners to interfere with the content of newspapers and television programmes because their businesses are economically far too complex for them to regularly interfere in the day-to-day running or the content.

Public service broadcasting
Pluralists point out that a significant share of the media market in Britain is taken up by public service broadcasters (PSB), i.e. media outlets controlled by the state such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC has a legal obligation to inform, to educate and to ensure that all programming is pluralistic and diverse, i.e. that all sections of society are catered for. Pluralists argue that PSB is impartial and objective, and balances out any potential bias in the private sector.

Pluralists note that the power of media owners is also restricted by state, or government, controls, e.g. in some societies, owners are not allowed to own too much media or different types of media. Many countries also have crossownership rules preventing people from owning more than one type of media. Furthermore, newspapers, television and radio in Britain are subject to legal controls and rules imposed on them by The Press Council and the Office for Communications (Ofcom).

Media professionalism
Pluralists stress that the professionalism of journalists and editors also constrains the power of owners. They argue that journalists are fierce in their pursuit of the truth and consequently they have too much integrity to be biased regularly in favour of one particular perspective. Investigative journalism also has a good reputation in uncovering abuses of power and corruption among the ruling elite.

The Marxist critique of media ownership and control
Marxists argue that the economic system of Britain, i.e. capitalism, is characterised by great inequalities in wealth and income which have been brought about by the exploitation of the labour power of the working classes. Marxists believe that in order to legitimate and reproduce this system of inequality, the capitalist class uses its cultural power to dominate institutions like education and the mass media and transmit ruling class ideology. The function of these agencies is to socialise the working class into accepting the legitimacy of the capitalist system and capitalist ideas. Consequently, Marxists argue working class people experience false class-consciousness - they come to accept that capitalism is a just system that benefits all social groups equally. They fail to see the reality of their situation that they are being exploited by a system that only benefits a powerful minority.

The media and ideology
Marxists believe that media owners (who are members of the capitalist elite) use their media outlets to transmit ruling class ideology. Miliband (1973) argued that the role of the media is to shape how we think about the world we live in and suggested that audiences are rarely informed about important issues such as inequalities in wealth or why poverty persists. The capitalist system is rarely criticised or challenged. Instead, Marxists suggest that owners shape media content so that only 'approved' and conformist views are heard.

Tunstall and Palmer (1991) suggest that governments are no longer interested in controlling the activities of media owners because they need their support to either gain power or hang onto it.

Evidence for the ideological nature of ownership and control
Marxists are suggesting that media owners, wealth holders and the political elite are united in some sort of ideological conspiracy to brainwash the general population. However, it is almost impossible to scientifically gather empirical evidence that supports this hypothesis. Sociologists generally only have anecdotal evidence to confirm their suspicions that concentration of media ownership is damaging democracy.

However, Curran's (2003) detailed systematic examination of the social history of the British press does suggest that the evidence for owner interference in and manipulation of British newspaper content is strong. Curran notes that in the period 1920-50 press barons openly boasted that they ran their newspapers for the express purpose of propaganda that reflected their political views. Curran points out that even when engaged in investigative reporting, the majority of newspapers in Britain have supported the Conservative Party.

Curran also notes that the period 1974-92 saw the emergence of Rupert Murdoch. However, Curran rejects the idea that Murdoch is part of a unified capitalist elite but acknowledges that Murdoch's newspapers are conservative in content and strongly supportive of capitalist interests. He argues Murdoch's motives are economic rather than ideological in that Murdoch believes that right wing economic policies are the key to vast profits.

Curran's analysis of British newspapers suggests that both pluralist and Marxist theories may be mistaken in the way they look at media ownership. He argues the pluralist view that media owners do not intervene in media content is evidentially false. Curran argues that since 2000 there has been even greater intervention by owners such as Murdoch. However, Curran disagrees with Marxists about the motive for this. He notes that the actions of media owners are not collectivised, rather they pursue their economic goals in a ruthlessly individualised way in an attempt to obtain a bigger share of the market than their capitalist competitors.
The Glasgow University Media Group KEY POINT - The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) suggests that media content does support the interests of those who run the capitalist system. However, this is an unintended by-product of the social backgrounds of journalists and broadcasters rather than a conscious capitalist conspiracy. The GUMG points out that most journalists working for national newspapers, television and radio tend to be overwhelmingly male, White, and middle class, e.g. 54% are privately educated.
The GUMG claims that these journalists and broadcasters tend to believe in middle-of-the-road (consensus) views and ideas because these are generally unthreatening. Journalists believe that these appeal to the majority of their viewers, listeners and readers. Ideas outside this consensus are viewed by journalists as 'extremist'. People who hold these opinions are rarely invited to contribute their views in newspapers or on television, or if they are, they are ridiculed by journalists.

The GUMG argues that these journalists are not motivated by a desire to defend capitalist interests. Media companies are profit-making businesses. Those who commission and plan programmes, or decide newspaper or magazine content, usually play safe by excluding anything that might offend or upset readers or viewers. Losing several thousand readers, or viewers, because they were offended by 'extreme' views and potentially losing millions of pounds in revenue and profit is too much of a risk.

Barnett and Weymour argue that such decisions have had a negative cultural effect in the sense that education, information and news have been increasingly sidelined. They compared television schedules in 1978, 1988 and 1998 and argued that the evidence suggests that television in Britain has been significantly dumbed down, e.g. the number of one-off dramas and documentaries has halved, while soap operas and cheap reality shows have increased fivefold. There are also now more repeats and cheap American imports. Time allocated to news programming has fallen dramatically, and more time on serious news programmes is devoted to celebrity news and human interest stories. Barnett and Weymour note that even the BBC is succumbing to these commercial pressures. Furthermore, they conclude that despite having hundreds of television channels, we do not have more choice, just more of the same thing.

Agenda setting
The result of this journalistic consensus, argues the GUMG, is that the media set the agenda and decide what issues are discussed by society and which ones are not. This is known as agenda setting. The GUMG argues that the media consequently present society with a fairly narrow agenda for discussion. Agenda setting therefore results in cultural hegemony. The basic principles of capitalism - private enterprise, profit, the free market and the rights of property ownership - dominate media content and are presented as 'normal' and 'natural'. There is actually little choice for audiences in that there is no radical alternative to the mainstream newspapers and dissenting views on subjects like the monarchy are rarely presented.

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Ownership and control of the media | a2-level-level-revision, sociology, mass-media-0, ownership-and-control-media | Revision World

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After studying this section, you should be able to understand: trends and patterns in ownership and control of a range of mass media the theoretical perspectives on the relationship between ownership and control of the media Trends in ownership and control

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Facebook has broadened its campaign to raise awareness about fake news, by publishing adverts in the UK press.

The ads, in papers including The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph, carry a list of 10 things to look out for when deciding if a story is genuine.

They include checking the article date and website address, as well as making sure it isn't intended as satire.

Facebook is under fresh political pressure to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election.

Meanwhile, a BBC Panorama investigation to be broadcast later on Monday has found the social network played a decisive role in both the US election and Britain's EU referendum last year.

'Danger'

The platform said it had already removed "tens of thousands" of fake Facebook accounts and that systems were now monitoring the repeated posting of the same content or a sharp increase in messaging. Accounts displaying this activity are then flagged, it added.

Facebook is also decreasing the ranking of stories that people tend to read but not share.

Last month Conservative MP Damian Collins asked Facebook to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election on 8 June.

"The danger is, if for many people the main source of news is Facebook and if the news they get on Facebook is mostly fake news, they could be voting based on lies," he told the Guardian.

Fake accounts

In a report released last month, Facebook admitted it had seen political propaganda deliberately spread on its site.

"We have observed many actions by fake account operators that could only be performed by people with language skills and a basic knowledge of the political situation in the target countries, suggesting a higher level of coordination and forethought," it said in the document.

It added that "several" cases during the 2016 US Presidential election had required action.

"People want to see accurate information on Facebook and so do we," said Simon Milner, Facebook's UK director of policy

"To help people spot false news we are showing tips to everyone on Facebook on how to identify if something they see is false."

He added that the firm was "supporting" two third-party fact checkers - Full Fact and First Draft - in the run up to the election but Facebook declined to say whether this is a financial arrangement.
Facebook's ten steps for spotting fake news

Be sceptical of headlines

Look closely at the URL [web address]

Investigate the source

Watch for unusual formatting

Consider the photos

Check the date

Check the evidence

Look at other reports

Is the story a joke?

Some stories are intentionally false [satirical]

When word-of-mouth plays into the hands of scammers: Analysis by Zoe Kleinman, BBC Technology Reporter
The spread of fake news across social media was accused by some of influencing the US presidential election in 2016.

Facebook has not gone so far as to accept that but its latest report acknowledges that there was some activity which "required action".

With the UK election just a month away today there is added pressure to crack down on it in Britain.

The creators of fake news make money because of the clicks on the ads they carry. Google and Facebook say they are committed to blocking them from using ad services but they are still popping up.

It's interesting and perhaps a sign of Facebook's older membership that it has chosen traditional print media to help spread its message in the UK.

The ten tips are sound advice and will be well-known to journalists already as standard checks. The difficulty is that if the link pops up in your Facebook news feed because it's been shared by one of your friends or relatives, you're likely to be more inclined to accept it at face value.

The power of word-of-mouth as a marketing tool is well known to both marketing professionals and scammers alike.

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Facebook has broadened its campaign to raise awareness about fake news, by publishing adverts in the UK press. The ads, in papers including The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph, carry a list of 10 things to look out for when deciding if a story is genuine.

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The social construction of the news - Sociology - Revision World

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The social construction of the news. This section includes: How news is perceived, the selection and presentation of news and sociological theories about news production.

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Women on television are affected by a "combination of ageism and sexism" that does not apply to men, new figures show.

Released by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, the figures suggest women disappear from TV screens as they get older.

As part of the work of the Older Women's Commission, Ms Harman, said that once women on television turn 50, their days on-screen are "numbered".

Ms Harman, shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, wrote to the six main UK broadcasters asking them how many older women they employ on screen and behind the camera.

The findings were that while the majority of over 50s in the UK are women (53.1%), the overwhelming majority of TV presenters who are over 50 are men (82%).

While TV presenters are broadly reflective of age in the general population - 30% of TV presenters are over 50 compared with 34% of the UK population - they are unrepresentative in terms of gender.

It was discovered that only 7% of the total TV workforce (on and off-screen) are women over the age of 50.

Ms Harman said: "The figures provided by broadcasters show clearly that once female presenters hit 50, their days on-screen are numbered.

"There is a combination of ageism and sexism that hits women on TV that doesn't apply to men in the same way.

"It is an encouraging first step that broadcasters have been open in providing these statistics. Their response shows that they all recognise that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

"I will be publishing these figures annually so we are able to monitor progress."

Miriam O'Reilly, who won an employment tribunal against the BBC on the grounds of ageism, said: "These figures raise the obvious questions of where have all the older women gone and why did they go? Was it their choice to leave their jobs or was it a decision forced upon them?

"The broadcasters say they are committed to the fair representation of older women, but the figures don't bear that out. I'd like to know the reasons why so many talented women have disappeared, while their male counterparts have grown older and still have their jobs."

Ms Harman will be holding a roundtable with broadcasters in the House of Commons today to challenge them to take action.

There will be representatives from the BBC, ITN, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News.

Ms Harman said for men "grey hair denotes wisdom, experience, authority", but there was a sense that viewers "need to be protected" from older women.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't think that's acceptable and I don't think women in the country think that just when they are past 50 they have to be airbrushed off our screens."

She added: "There has been a very big change in the generation of older women that there are now. They are in much better health than their mothers, they are more likely to have taken their work much more seriously, have higher educational qualifications.

"Yet the assumption is that they have to be pushed out of the door if they are not looking young, looking in their reproductive years. No they are not young, they are 50 and 60, but that doesn't mean they should be pushed out the door and they don't have a major and growing contribution to work and to broadcasting."

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Older women are disappearing from TV due to combination of ageism and

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Women on television are affected by a "combination of ageism and sexism" that does not apply to men, new figures show. Released by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, the figures suggest women disappear from TV screens as they get older.

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"We do not believe this is currently being achieved in the context of the BBC's EU coverage."

It comes after MPs held a series of evidence sessions which included appearances from Lord Hall, BBC Director-General and James Harding, BBC Director of News and Current Affairs.

"We still remain deeply concerned about the manner in which the BBC treats EU issues," the report out today concludes.

It says BBC bosses who gave evidence "seemed to be more intent on defending and asserting their own opinions, mindset and interpretation" of impartiality obligations rather than saying whether they had actually delivered them.

The MPs noted that 58 per cent of voters look to the BBC for news they trust and called on the Corporation to "improve substantially the manner in which it treats EU issues".

Sir William said the committee members "deplore" the fact they had to make repeated calls for Lord Hall and the previous BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten to appear before MPs.

"Given the possibility of a referendum on the UK's EU membership before the end of the decade ... the issue of how the media in general and the BBC in particular covers the EU is of paramount importance," the MPs said.

They called on their criticisms of the way EU concerns are covered to form "a key factor" in next year's review of the BBC Charter.

The comments mark the latest in a series of recent clashes between MPs and the BBC over its coverage of politically sensitive topics.

David Cameron and George Osborne claimed the Corporation's coverage of cuts announced at the Autumn Statement last year had been "hyperbolic".

Mr Osborne said of a reporter's description of the scale of future cuts: "I would have thought the BBC would have learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened."

A BBC spokesman said: "As Lord Hall told the committee, we are and will be impartial in all matters concerning our coverage. The BBC provides extensive coverage of both European and Parliamentary issues and while we respect the committee's role, it would obviously be a breach of our independence if a committee of MPs were to instruct us how to cover an individual issue or story."

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BBC coverage of European Union 'is biased and letting down viewers', MPs find

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"We do not believe this is currently being achieved in the context of the BBC's EU coverage." It comes after MPs held a series of evidence sessions which included appearances from Lord Hall, BBC Director-General and James Harding, BBC Director of News and Current Affairs.

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podology :: sociology podcasts and articles. podology is a new website designed as a resource for those that are either teaching or studying sociology. the site holds a bank of resources in the form of podcasts

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videos and articles that cover a range of s

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Podology :: Sociology Podcasts and Articles. Podology is a new website designed as a resource for those that are either teaching or studying Sociology. The site holds a bank of resources in the form of podcasts, videos and articles that cover a range of s

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A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

The Guardian was given exclusive access to churnalism.com prior to launch. It revealed how all media organisations are at times simply republishing, verbatim, material sent to them by marketing companies and campaign groups.

Meanwhile, an independent film-maker, Chris Atkins, has revealed how he duped the BBC into running an entirely fictitious story about Downing Street's new cat to coincide with the site's launch.

The director created a Facebook page in the name of a fictitious character, "Tim Sutcliffe", who claimed the cat - which came from Battersea Cats Home - had belonged to his aunt Margaret. The story appeared in the Daily Mail and Metro, before receiving a prominent slot on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Atkins, who was not involved in creating churnalism.com, uses spoof stories to highlight the failure of journalists to corroborate stories. He was behind an infamous prank last year that led to the BBC running a news package on a hoax Youtube video purporting to show urban foxhunters.

The creation of churnalism.com is likely to unnerve overworked journalists and the press officers who feed them. "People don't realise how much churn they're being fed every day," said Martin Moore, director of the trust, which seeks to improve standards in news. "Hopefully this will be an eye-opener."

Moore said he accepted journalists often have a valid reason for using press releases, and will often need to copy and paste significant chunks, such as official statements and quotes. But he said that on many occasions reporters appear to be lifting press release text verbatim and adding little or no additional material.

In a typical example, the Express, Mirror and Sun all lifted of chunks of text from a press release last month on behalf of the Benenden Healthcare Society, which quoted a poll showing "British women spend more money on their looks than their health". The Daily Mail copied 98% of the text directly from the press release. Similarly, the Mirror, Mail and Express all reproduced chunks from a press release by campaign group Migration Watch, criticising immigration rates under the previous Labour government. However, the Times made the greatest use of it, running an article that was 53% cut-and-pasted press release.

Other broadsheets, including the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph, are also shown to be "churning" press releases to varying degrees.

Interestingly, all media outlets appear particularly susceptible to PR material disseminated by supermarkets: the Mail appears to have a particular appetite for publicity from Asda and Tesco, while the Guardian favours Waitrose releases.

Moore said one unexpected discovery has been that the BBC news website appears particularly prone to churning publicity material.

"Part of the reason is presumably because they feel a duty to put out so many government pronouncements," Moore said. "But the BBC also has a lot to produce in regions that the newspapers don't cover."

It was after a discussion with Moore that Atkins decided to spend last week seeding fictitious stories through the media. Atkins, who was the film-maker behind Starsuckers (a documentary that duped the tabloid press in 2009 with hoax stories), has planted a range of bizarre press releases across the media.

One involved the marketing of the "penazzle", supposedly the male answer to the female beauty trend in crystal designs known as "vajazzles", which appeared in the Sun and in a column by Guardian writer Suzanne Moore.

Another fake story about a "chastity garter", which contains a text message-sending microchip to alert a woman's partner if she is being unfaithful, became the "most read" story on the Daily Mail's website. It was then reproduced by media outlets across the world, including morning TV news in the United States.

But it was Atkins's bogus Facebook campaign calling for the return of the prime minister's new cat, Larry, that has been most successful. Within 24 hours of the site having been created, the Mail ran the story under the heading: "But that's my auntie's cat: Man's claim on 'stray' No 10 ratcatcher (... and there's a Facebook campaign to get him back)." It also appeared in the Metro, under the heading: "Dear David Cameron: You've stolen my aunt's cat, please return him."

But the entirely made up story received most attention on Gaby Logan's BBC 5 Live show, in a light-hearted slot before the 1 o'clock news.. Discussing the story with chief political correspondent John Pienaar, Logan joked that the dispute over ownership of Larry the Downing Street cat was likely to "run and run".
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Churnalism or news? How PRs have taken over the media

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A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases. A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

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Nearly three-quarters of top management jobs in news media across the world are held by men, as are two-thirds of reporting jobs, a new study has found.

But the International Women's Media Foundation in Washington found 41% of senior anchors, writers, editors and producers in the industry were women.

Women were best represented in Europe and worst in Asia, the study of 170,000 people in 522 news companies found.

But the survey found no significant improvement from a smaller 1995 study.

Across the entire newspaper, radio and television workforce studied, the survey found 65% of jobs were held by men, compared to 35% by women.

"There is still quite a lot of work to be done to achieve some sort of equal footing in the industry," said Liza Gross, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation.

Egalitarian Eastern Europe

The study did not address the affects the disparity has on the news media product, findings Ms Gross expected from a future study.

Among the news organisations studied, the survey found the most gender equity in 85 newsrooms of Eastern Europe, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

There, men's and women's salaries were comparable across all levels in the profession, a finding the survey authors attributed to the Soviet-era practice of educating women and moving them into the work force in great numbers.

In 47 newsrooms surveyed in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, women were nearing parity with men among the ranks of "junior professionals", a category which included correspondents, writers, sub-editors, producers and presenters.

But the survey reported women hit a "glass ceiling" at the senior professional level, holding only roughly a third of jobs in middle management and a quarter in top management.

In the 14 newsrooms surveyed in the US, women comprised about 41% of the total workforce, but were under-represented in the executive ranks, filling only 23.3% of the top management jobs, the survey found.

Under-represented in Asia

"Women have been successful in gaining access to US news companies in numbers approaching those of men overall, but they are not yet at parity with men in their status across occupational levels," the study found.

The study found women the most under-represented in 10 nations of Asia and the Pacific rim - Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines and South Korea.

In Japan, for example, only one in eight newsroom jobs are held by women. The study suggested that low number was down to the relatively low rate of turnover in the Japanese workforce.

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Nearly three-quarters of top management jobs in news media across the world are held by men, as are two-thirds of reporting jobs, a new study has found. But the International Women's Media Foundation in Washington found 41% of senior anchors, writers, editors and producers in the industry were women.

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Equally those who mainly played solitary games generally performed better academically and were less likely to display aggression.

But it concluded that any effects were small and that overall video games were at most a "statistically significant, yet minor, factor" in shaping children's behaviour.

Researchers interviewed just over 200 children aged 10 and 11 about their playing habits including how long they spent each day and what types of game they preferred.

Meanwhile their teachers were asked to assess the children's academic engagement, behaviour and ability to deal with problems.

Two thirds of the children said they played video games every day - although boys were almost twice as likely as girls to do so. Around one in 10 said they played more than three hours a day, again a group dominated by boys.

Overall those who played for less than an hour a day were less likely to have problems such as aggression than those who did not play at all.

But those who spend more than three hours a day displayed higher levels of aggression and were less academically engaged.

"Taken together, this suggests that quantity may play a larger role than the quality of games played - a counter intuitive finding for many focused on the violent contents of some gaming contexts," the paper concludes.

It adds: "These findings do not support the idea that regular violent game play is linked to real world violence or conflict."

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Study finds no evidence violent video games make children aggressive

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Equally those who mainly played solitary games generally performed better academically and were less likely to display aggression. But it concluded that any effects were small and that overall video games were at most a "statistically significant, yet minor, factor" in shaping children's behaviour.

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Glossies so white: the data that reveals the problem with British magazine covers

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An investigation by the Guardian shows there's still a long way to go before black and ethnic minority people are properly represented on the covers of many glossy monthlies

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Disabled people and the over-50s are the two most under-represented minority groups in the broadcasting industry, according to a report.

Disabled people make up just 6.5% of on-screen staff and 5.5% of off-screen staff in television, even though 18% of the national population have a disability. Over-50s - who are 36% of the population - make up 24.2% of on-screen and 20.4% of off-screen workers.

The findings are in a provisional report by Diamond, a project set up in 2015 by the major broadcasters, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, to monitor diversity in the industry.

The project has generated significant controversy in the broadcasting industry because it does not break down the diversity of each organisation. Bectu, the trade union, and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain threatened to boycott the report over the refusal to publish details about the broadcasters.

Just 24% of the individuals working in television who were asked to submit information to the survey did so. This is equivalent to almost 6,000 people. However, the quality of the data has been approved in an independent review by the National Centre for Social Research.

The report states that 21.5% of on-screen workers have a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background but this slumps to 10.1% for off-screen. This compares with 13% of the UK population with a BAME background.

The findings are likely to increase calls for Ofcom to set targets for the number of BBC off-screen workers with a BAME background. Themedia regulator is under growing pressure to take action over the issue.

Diamond shows that women take up 48.1% of on-screen roles and 54.6% of off-screen roles, when they make up 51% of the population. LGB people take up 13.2% of on-screen roles and 11.7% of off-screen, and are 6.4% of the UK population, while 0.8% of on-screen roles are fulfilled by transgender people, the same proportion they form of the population as a whole. No transgender off-screen workers were recorded.

Deborah Williams, chief executive of the organisation behind Diamond, the Creative Diversity Network, said: "Diamond has been, and still is a hugely complex project to deliver. We now have an operational and systematic approach to collecting meaningful data across the UK industry. Diamond was built to provide long term monitoring, and with less than a year's worth of data, it would be premature to draw conclusions from it or set definitive benchmarks.

"However, Diamond represents a committed decision by leading UK broadcasters to deliver a change. Now we need every individual within the industry to support the project by entering their data when asked and we will have a real opportunity to take Diamond to the next level and bring about the ambitious change we all want."
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Disabled people and over-50s most under-represented in broadcasting

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Disabled people and the over-50s are the two most under-represented minority groups in the broadcasting industry, according to a report. Disabled people make up just 6.5% of on-screen staff and 5.5% of off-screen staff in television, even though 18% of the national population have a disability.