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Business Daily: Murdoch's media meltdown

08/07/2011

Murdoch's media meltdown

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Murdoch's media meltdown

Will closing Britain's most popular newpaper solve Murdoch's global empire crisis?

Is closing Britain's best selling newspaper bold crisis management or a measure of the problems facing Murdoch's global media empire?

The mettle of a company's managers is only truly tested during a crisis.  So what does Rupert Murdoch's decision to close down the British Newspaper, the News of the World, tell us about the management of his global media empire and about the crisis that engulfs it?  

It is certainly a bold move.  The News of the World is Britain's best selling Sunday paper and generates healthy profits - a very rare quality in the newspaper business these days.  

But the paper's practice of  tapping into the mobile phones of anyone it was remotely interested in has become a huge international scandal after it was revealed journalists had targeted murdered children and the families of British soldiers killed in action.  

It comes at a particularly sensitive time for News Corp, Murdoch's global media conglomerate.  News Corp is in the process over trying to take full control of the UK satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting.  

So is this another example of the Murdoch family's audacious business acumen or it a measure of the depth of the trouble their business is in?  

To answer that question Justin Rowlatt interviews Charlie Beckett, who teaches international journalism and society at the London School of Economics.

Plus, why is it that free trade can seem so costly when times are tough?

Economists argue that, in the long run, free trade between nations benefits everyone - output will always be higher when trade is free.  The problem is it doesn't always seem that way in the short run - especially at times of recession. 

That is why free trade agreements between countries are particularly strained at the moment, notably in Europe.  European Union rules mean governments must advertise contracts throughout the Union and decisions must not be based on nationality.  

That is why the British government chose to award a contract to build trains to Germany rather than the country's last manufacturer of railway rolling stock in the city of Derby.  

The decision is all the more poignant because Derby used to be a centre of railway innovation not just for Britain but for the world.  

It has prompted a vigorous debate in the UK about why it seems that EU rules are interpreted differently in different European nations as I've been discovering.

And finally, it is funny how the English language can be mangled. I don't mean spelling mistakes or punctuation slip-ups. No, sometimes words are used to mean one thing, when they in fact mean something completely different. 

I'm not talking about jargon, which is a regular topic on this programme; rather, words like austerity, which mean one thing in industrialised economies, and an entirely different thing in the developing world. 

And, according to our Washington economics commentator Steve Fritzinger, the use of what he calls 'Bad Words' is on the rise.

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