UK supports media concentration

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is now entitled to take full ownership of pay-TV broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting, as announced by the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday. The conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph sees in the takeover a threat to British media diversity: "It is not just Mr Murdoch's commercial competitors - such as Telegraph Media Group - that should be alarmed by this. The plurality of news providers is a fundamental part of our democratic process, which this ill-judged decision threatens to undermine. In approving the takeover without referral to the Competition Commission, Mr Hunt has not only spurned the advice of Ofcom, the media regulator; he has also fuelled the suspicion that this Government, just like the last, will go through all sorts of contortions to oblige the most powerful media magnate on the planet."

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