A.K.A. The Phantom Prime Minister

 “For better or for worse, our company (The News Corporation Ltd.) is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values.”  You can't build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.  I try to keep in touch with the details... I also look at the product daily. That doesn't mean you interfere, but it's important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what's happening.

 Murdoch owns NewsCorp; an enormous media conglomerate.  A media conglomerate is a company that owns various types of media.  NewsCorp is a transnational company; it has some form of media business on every continent.  Murdoch also owns other non-media businesses, such as sports franchises.

 NewsCorp owns or has a controlling interest in… - Fox (TV and film) - Star (Asian TV and film company) - Cable and Sky different newspapers, employing approximately 15,000 people worldwide and printing more than 40 million papers a week. New York Times, 20 th Century Fox film studios. - A number of publishing companies, including HarperCollins.

 In the UK alone, NewsCorp own the following newspapers… - The Times – (650,000)* - The Sunday Times – (1,230,000)* - The Sun – (3,120,000)* - News of the World - (3,440,000)*  Fox, Sky, HarperCollins and various other NewsCorp companies have UK-based divisions. * This figure denotes the average UK circulation per issue during January 2005 (Taken from the website of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (

 Williams (2003) describes Murdoch as having ‘allocative control’ – i.e. Murdoch has the power to… - set the goals of the organisation - make key financial decisions  Murdoch has rarely been shy about using his power to exercise control over his organisation, or to exercise control over others (e.g. politicians).  Read through the 2 newspaper articles

 He has sacked editors who did not share his views. "I give my editors plenty of freedom. The only ones I fired were the ones who didn't know how to use it."  He reduced the price of his newspapers to drive out competitors and was accused of ‘predatory pricing’ designed to put smaller companies out of business.  He voiced his support for war in Iraq…as did his 175 newspapers!

 In pairs read through your articles  What are they about  Is their a particular view point that is overtly/covertly expressed?  How is this done?

 NewsCorp now own My Space   What impact do you think this will have?

 Identify and briefly explain 3 problems with Media ownership being concentrated to a small number of corporations.