08 Informed Spotlight


Is the Fox/Sky deal a Disney fairytale ending?


Ian Burrell reports on the latest chapter in the international media takeover saga


For more than five years a giant fibreglass caricature of Rupert Murdoch’s head has been a haunting presence whenever the media magnate’s empire has strayed into legal and political controversy. At the publication of the Leveson inquiry report, outside the High Court in the Strand for phone-hacking hearings, and in front of the Houses of Parliament, the Rupert dummy has been there, oſten worn by a man in stilts dangling smaller puppets of David Cameron or Teresa May, Murdoch’s supposed marionetes. Te proposed $66bn (£47.5bn) deal in which Disney absorbs most of 21st Century Fox has changed the background scenery of this long-running piece of theatre. Murdoch – the great media expansionist of the past half- century – suddenly appears to be in retreat.


But the puppet head, constructed by the campaigns group Avaaz, will not yet be packed away as a cultural artefact of a bygone era. “Te big Murdoch head has been a


powerful symbol of his size and stature in the UK media and politics and it may soon be time for both the head and the man himself to think about retirement, but not quite yet,” says Alex Wilks, who has been a leader of the Avaaz campaign against the founder of News Corporation and sometimes the man inside the Murdoch mask. Te mogul still has a lot of power in the UK media, he argues and, in another twist, Avaaz is celebrating winning its bid for a judicial review on the ruling by Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, that Sky would remain “fit and proper” to hold a UK licence if it was owned by 21st Century Fox. Te group argued that James Murdoch was not a fit and proper person because of his stewardship of the family’s UK newspaper stable at the time of the phone hacking scandal. “Te case is arguable and may raise some important points of principle,” said Mr Justice Morris, who granted the judicial review, which will be heard before June 30.


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