The News Corp. Scandal: 'The Trouble With MPs Who Want to Dictate Media Ownership'

At the Wall Street Journal, "Fit and Unfit to Publish" (via Google):

America's Founders wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution so that government couldn't control the press. That wisdom is worth recalling in the wake of a British parliamentary committee's assertion Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company."

Think about that one: Six members of an 11-member political committee deign to dictate who should or shouldn't run a media company. The language in that phrase "not a fit person" is clearly intended to influence regulators who must meet a "fit and proper" standard in deciding who can own a British broadcaster. Mr. Murdoch is CEO of News Corp., which owns this newspaper as well as 39% of BSkyB, the British broadcaster. The regulator is currently reviewing BSkyB's license. It's hard to imagine a clearer case of politically pressuring a regulator to push out an unpopular owner.

The "not a fit person" broadside was too much for four Tory MPs on the panel, who dissented on that point. (The Tory committee chairman abstained.) One of the dissenters, Louise Mensch, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying the line "was stuck in on the basis of no evidence presented to committee whatsoever."

That underscores the partisan nature of the decision by six Labour and Liberal-Democrat MPs to exceed their charge of exploring whether the committee had been misled and instead to condemn Mr. Murdoch.

But the problem goes beyond partisanship to the larger risks this poses to a vigorous free press. Even a fair-minded, nonpartisan political inquiry into who can or cannot own a printing press or broadcast license is bound to have a chilling effect on media coverage of government. The potential for political intimidation is great.

Imagine if the government of one of the new European democracies were pursuing a similar campaign against an independent media owner. We can write the BBC condemnation ourselves. Come to think of it, various Europeans have been rightly critical of a similar squeeze on media ownership by the Turkish government and a new media law in Hungary.

Or imagine if a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives decided to opine on the fitness of Carlos Slim, the controversial Mexican billionaire-monopolist, to invest in the New York Times? The media denunciations of the politicians would be loud and deserved.

None of this is meant to sweep away the hacking scandal at the defunct News of the World tabloid that the parliamentary committee had been investigating. The hacking—and its handling by the London police and News Corp.—has been under criminal investigation for many months. Several journalists have been arrested, though so far no one has been charged in the current probe. We assume that if crimes were committed, they will be prosecuted—and the accused given the chance to defend themselves.

The investigations have also turned up evidence of a failure at News Corp. to get to the bottom of the hacking scandal early and with enough vigor. This is no small matter...

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