Murdoch privatizes government propaganda

I was listening this morning the radio program Democracy Now while a guy made a very clever point. He said that Murdoch owns televisions all over the world (for example, Fox in US) and that he also owns a satellite channel in China. But, how can Murdoch buy television channels in every country? At the cost of oversimplifying, the model is the following: “I, Murdoch, offer you to privatize the government propaganda and you, govern, offer me a monopoly in Broadcasting.”

Actually, it is a very clever move, I don’t see any reason for a govern (US, China, Italy, whatever, …) to say no to this offer.
By the way, Murdoch also owns all the satellite channels in Italy (SkyTv). So we have a monopolist and prime minister that owns all the traditional 6 tv channels and a global monopolist that owns all the satellite tv channels. Do you wonder why Italy is 53th in the world press freedom ranking?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *