Cricket is losing the popularity contest

George Dobell in Cricinfo


The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream


Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty Images



There are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.

So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.

That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.

But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.

The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.

When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.

Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.

It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.

They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.

They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.

Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.

It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.

That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.

The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.

But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.

The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.

Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.

Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.

Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.

Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.

And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.

The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline -  The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.

This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.

Australian Cricket: hubris, despair, panic

Clarke and Co find themselves where England were in the 1990s. But how did the two nations fall into such a state?

Ed Smith

July 24, 2013

	Sport suffers from the delusion that great leaders can change everything about their circumstances. They cannot © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Michael Clarke | Darren Lehmann Series/Tournaments: Australia tour of England and Scotland Teams: Australia | England

I have been watching Michael Clarke, but the shadows I see following him around - to my eyes, anyway - resemble the ghosts of old English nightmares.

When Clarke stood at slip on the third day at Lord's, with the match over as a contest but unmercifully drawn out as a spectacle, he experienced what every captain dreads. He could move the deckchairs, but the boat was sinking. He could change the bowling, but it would be determined by a sense of fairness and sharing the burden rather than to swing the match; he could set new fields, but more to protect pride rather than ensnare opponents; and, worst of all, he had to weigh up how fully to engage in captaining the fielding effort, and how much emotional energy to preserve for when his turn to bat came around. Captaining the team, captaining your own mood, managing defeat, managing the draining away of hope.

I bumped into Mike Brearley during the long afternoon slaughter and we agreed: no captain, so far behind in the match and still awaiting a slim chance to save the match with his own bat, can captain flat out in the field all day. He inevitably dips in and out of full engagement, the long spells of routine steadiness in which he preserves emotional energy interspersed with shorter bursts of activity and invention designed partly just to keep up his own sense of interest and alertness. And what emotional outlook should you adopt? Is it easier to retain optimism and be perpetually let down? Or better to accept the inevitable, release the burden of pretence, and just wait to bat with coolly detached precision?

And that is why the shadows looked so English to my eyes. I thought of Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, hurling their considerable competitiveness and intelligence at the effort to win the Ashes - pick any moment you like, really, between 1993 and 2002-03 - and ending up exhausted, holding a losing hand of cards, looking within once again, wondering how much more they still had left to give when called upon to bat.

Clarke, when the series is over, will doubtless seek honest conversations with men who have experienced similar suffering. Ironically, the opposition coach, Andy Flower, knows more than most about how to retain exceptional standards while playing for an inferior team.

All of which leads me to the central point: if you are interested in leadership (and I have never met a sports fan without strong opinions about captains, managers and selectors) then you have the obligation to be equally interested in context. Sport, like political analysis, suffers from the recurrent delusion that great leaders can change everything about their circumstances, that they can engineer a new reality out of will power and charisma alone. They cannot.

Just think how beside the point the analysis of Darren Lehmann's character and personality now sounds. It is the same Lehmann - with the same sense of fun and enjoyment, the same sharp cricketing brain, the same mischievous enthusiasm. All of which is being applied to the same tendency of Shane Watson to get lbw, the same Phillip Hughes weakness against spin, the same holes at the top of the order, the same shortage of new cabs on the rank. No coach can solve all those problems in a few weeks. So it is largely irrelevant to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the man currently trying to do so. Mickey Arthur is suing Cricket Australia for damage to his reputation. Perhaps he should be sending them a cheque and a letter of thanks for preserving it.

So let us leave behind the soap opera, the tidbits of gossip and intrigue. No causal truths reside there. What David Warner's brother thinks of Shane Watson did not lose Australia the Test match, nor did the sacking of Arthur, nor homework-gate, nor an incident in a nightclub, nor even an alleged rift in the team. There was, in fact, no news from Lord's. Old failings, long present, were simply exposed in a clearer light.

Players, they are the problem; performance, that is the flaw; culture, that is the cause.

Before the 2010-11 Ashes, I suggested that the pillars of Australian excellence - club cricket, state cricket, and a hard-bitten unified cricketing culture that ran through their game at all levels - had crumbled. One firm push and the citadel might fall. I first put my theory to a distinguished former England captain. He didn't quite ridicule me, but he smirked at the idea that an enemy that had inflicted so much pain on him might now suffer structural decline. I deferred to his greater experience, cut short my conversational theorising, and steeled myself for print instead.

This is what I wrote in the Spectator on 20th November 2010:

The idea will not leave me alone. A sneaking question keeps coming into my head: are Australia losing their cricketing edge? And I don't just mean the Ashes. I mean the whole legend of the Aussie battler that has been constructed over decades of flinty toughness…

[Once] self-reliance was as central as toughness. Rod Marsh's coaching advice was simple: "Sort it out for yourself." That spirit ran through the great tradition. Bradman taught himself to bat by hitting a golf ball against a wall with a stick. Learning to bat was another form of looking after yourself, like pitching a tent in the outback. That resilience was compounded by the sense that Australians had a point to prove, that the world too often underestimated them. Cricket was a means of getting even…

I was brought up on the received wisdom that it was the Australian system that made them so tough - the strong club cricket, the fierce inter-state rivalries. Each has now declined, at least to some extent. It may be a very long time indeed - a full turn of the dynastic wheel - before Australia will again be able to boast such a record of dominance.

	let us leave behind the soap opera, the tidbits of gossip and intrigue. No causal truths reside there. What David Warner's brother thinks of Shane Watson did not lose Australia the Test match, nor did the sacking of Arthur, nor homework-gate, nor an incident in a nightclub

Since then, Australia have lost five Ashes Tests, several disastrously, and won just one.

It has become a truism that Australia now find themselves where England were in the 1990s. Less explored is the question of how the two nations fell into such a state.

Here is my abbreviated history of England's decline. First, phase one: "Cricket is our game; we run it. We have the oldest, richest and most fully professional game in the world. We know best and won't take any lectures from New World upstarts."

Well, that didn't work too well. After decades of being overtaken by leaner, hungrier cricketing nations, the original decline was compounded by the following over-reaction. Let's call it phase two: "England must now copy Australia, who are the best team in the world. We must reshape our character as well as our institutions to follow a new model."

Hubris, in other words, gave way to despair, confusion and panic. Sound familiar?

Yes, that is now the lot of Australia. First, phase one of decline: "We win because Aussies are tougher, braver, better mates and grew up getting bounced and abused in club matches tougher than war zones. We are cut from different cloth, born of a different gene pool. The rest of the cricketing world is effete and soft. Leopards don't change their spots. Seen one Pom, seen them all…"

At Lord's, Australia entered phase two: despair and confusion. History tells us to expect all manner of wrong turns and pseudo solutions, sackings and scapegoats, false dawns and bad logic. Most of it will be aimed at the wrong targets.

The English should be wary of gloating. After all, it took decades of quick fixes and attempted root-and-branch reform before England eventually emerged from the darkness. That was through luck as well as planning. Sporting success is increasingly determined by wealth and England can invest in success because it has deeper pockets, thanks to the bounty television rights, than any nation except India.

Conclusion: the best guard against hubris is continuing to recognise the role of fortune. Just ask Australia.

Just how wrong is the BCCI?

The Indian board is easily - often deservedly - painted as a villain, but often it is all too convenient to do so

Rob Steen

October 31, 2012

 

	Such is the frequency with which the BCCI flexes its muscles, it has become almost too exhausting to criticise the board for it every time © AFP Enlarge
Related Links News : BBC joins Sky in BCCI broadcast wrangle News : BCCI holds firm on broadcaster fees Series/Tournaments: England tour of India Teams: India

Contradicting Ian Chappell during his days as baggy green 'un-in-chief was never a terribly wise idea, and it remains ever thus. As he asserted recently on this site, given that it can hardly be held responsible for all of cricket's ills, bashing the BCCI for every chink, kink and ruffle serves as a deterrent to deeper thought and as an alibi for inaction.

Besides, bashing the BCCI is now akin to criticising the Kremlin 30 years ago or the USA ever since, especially while the Bush boys were calling the shots. Indeed, such is the frequency with which the BCCI flexes its muscles like the proverbial playground bully, it has almost become too exhausting, not to say frustrating, to bother. If it isn't the refusal to back the DRS, it's the reluctance to invite Bangladesh over for an ODI, let alone a Test. To relent, though, is to concede defeat, which is what all bullies want. Eventually the Kremlin caved.

What, for instance, are we to make of the decision to demand that Sky Sports and the BBC cough up £500,000 and £50,000 respectively to cover England's impending set-to with India? While this might not necessarily be an over-estimate for 2000 sq ft of additional space at four Test venues, even if the air-conditioning does function properly, the short notice smacks of brinkmanship at best, at worst naked exploitation. Not that the idea of the ever-pompous BBC and the never knowingly satisfied Murdoch empire both being taken for a ride doesn't have considerable allure.

As with the refusal to field a frontline spinner in the India A XI, are we simply witnessing yet another skirmish in yet another pre-series, charm-free offensive ("C'mon lads, let's see if we can wind up Iron Bottom and all those snotty BBC types - should do MS and the boys a power of good")? Could it be a dastardly plot to cut Test Match Special out of the loop and do a back-door deal with those excitable folk at TalkSPORT? Or might it be something far more disreputable? Regardless of your vantage point, or even the efficiency of your blinkers, the words "fair", "proportionate" and "appropriate" are marginally less likely to spring to mind than "grasping", "provocative" or "here we go again".

We could be kind, magnanimous, even generous. We could interpret this unseemly kerfuffle as nothing more than a show of patriotic faith in native expertise and charisma, however misguided. It's India v England after all, in India, so why on earth shouldn't the world watch while armed with the guidance of Ravi, Sanjay and Harsha, who plainly know a great deal more about local conditions than Nasser, Sir Ian and Bumble? In any event, even if you really would rather hear "Got 'im!" or "Dropped 'im" exclaimed with a Lancastrian burr or an Essex twang, didn't Indian viewers in the fifties and sixties have to put up with haughty Jim Swanton and plummy Peter West?

But let's consider the other plausibility. Namely, that the BCCI believes the world beyond India should not be exposed to waspish condemnations of the board's DRS-phobia whenever a wicket is unjustly lost or falsely won. Those objections may have been documented ad nauseam but the bottom line remains as galling as ever: nine for, one against.

Such a blatant subversion of the democratic process need not, of course, be a guarantee of bad faith, 

or even downright wrongness. After all, the vast majority of the developed world was profoundly, almost religiously, racist for centuries. In any event, not even the DRS's most hardened and vehement advocates would strenuously challenge the observation that the fine-tuning prompted by the BCCI's prodding has enhanced the implementation of justice. I'm one and I certainly wouldn't. But still. Nine for, one against.

 

EMPATHY TIME. As a North London Jew, devoutly irreligious but fiercely proud of my race, I like to think I am not unfamiliar with what it feels like right now, what it means in 2012, to be an Indian cricket lover - as opposed, that is, to a lover of Indian cricket, a weakness to which, given that Indian cricket embodies the game's passions and subtleties like no other, I am only too happy to confess. I am also humbly and undyingly grateful for the Indian passion for cricket, without which the game might well not have a significant future. Or any future.

I too know what it is like to read an article about fellow members of my tribe - for the BCCI, read just about every Israeli government in recent memory - and shudder. Just because something shameful is done purportedly, in "our" name doesn't mean the rest of the world should view this as proof of consent, (im)morality or even fraternal forgiveness. Similarly, criticism of Israel shouldn't automatically brand the critic as anti-semitic.

Thus, more or less, did I begin my contribution to the annual Oxford Indian Society Symposium two weekends ago. There were 30 or so souls in the lecture theatre at St Antony's College, the rump of them students, all thoroughly immersed in the topic under discussion, "Are the BCCI's burgeoning finances harming world cricket?" - if only because it doubtless came as welcome light relief in the wake of sessions such as "What do the recent politics of protest in India and elsewhere imply for the principle of representation in parliamentary democracy?", "What is the future of India as a welfare state?" and "Can India's aggressive drive for nuclear energy ensure energy security in an environmentally responsible and internationally acceptable manner?"

	Those ills for which the BCCI is responsible - selfishness, undemocracy, irresponsible use of power, blind allegiance to the almighty crore - are hard to ignore because they affect everyone who truly cares about this precious, precariously perched obsession of ours

In common with the organisers, I had hoped that my fellow panelists would number that world-renowned twit… sorry, Tweeter, Lalit Modi. Sadly, despite having confirmed his attendance, he'd cried off. A huge pity on a personal front, for two reasons: a) I had prepared what I was going to say with him very much in mind; b) his response would have been intriguing at the very least, at best, eminently newsworthy.

After Andrew Miller, the other panelist, had offered an erudite analysis of the ECB's economic and diplomatic strategy (if "strategy" isn't too flattering a word to describe some of its more harebrained actions), we took questions from the floor. What struck me most forcefully was the depth of embarrassment at some of the BCCI's less admirable policies. Some were genuinely shocked to learn that Bangladesh had yet to play a Test in India. Others recoiled at the image of India as filtered through the IPL: insular, superficial, brash, crass. Scepticism abounded, cynicism too. If anyone took issue with what I'd said - and, while suitably polite and anti-inflammatory of adjective, I can't say I pulled many punches - they kept it firmly to themselves. Sure, you could dismiss such reactions as either politeness or the predictable reactions of the privileged, but from where I was sitting, that would mean doubting their manifest sincerity.

All that said, few, surely, will quibble with the notion that, however long overdue, the racial shift in the balance of power at the game's top table, one unprecedented in any other major sport, has brought out the worst in many, particularly those stuffy Old Worldsters who would rather live in some sepia-drenched imperial past where the English Way is the Only Way; who would rather badmouth an accomplished younger brother for a minor misdemeanour than cheer his triumphs.

No matter what one feels about him, it was inevitable that Modi would clash with Giles Clarke, another chap accustomed to getting his own way. When new money meets new money, historical baggage is the barrier. "Be placatory," advised Rosie, a measured and terrifyingly eloquent hitman in Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg's ageless psychedelic-rock 'n' roll-gangster movie Performance: had Clarke been even semi-placatory, accepting the way cricket's axis had shifted, the ECB's desultory and delusory marriage of convenience to Allen Stanford would almost certainly never have got beyond a first date.

Empathy, however, has its limits. Those ills for which the BCCI is responsible - selfishness, undemocracy, irresponsible use of power, blind allegiance to the almighty crore - are hard to ignore because they affect everyone who truly cares about this precious, precariously perched obsession of ours. The impression, sadly, is that those we entrust to administer it are simply not up to snuff (there's no "I" in "run" but there is one in "ruin"). CLR James' immortal question needs updating: "What do they know who only money know?"

Which brings us back to what may one day be remembered, with much mirth, as "Skygate". Or better yet, "Bumblegate". To pretend that it's all about the dosh, given that the BCCI's most recent balance sheet showed a hearty profit, is plainly preposterous. And yet… last week, auditors, for the second year running, felt unable to approve the BCCI's accounts. Perhaps "Bumblegate" is indicative of a genuine recognition, after the years of wine and plenty, that, from now on, every pleasure must be earned and every rupee treasured?

And so to this week's quick quiz:

1) Would the honourable BCCI officials (and even the dishonourable ones) support slapping a surcharge on a ticket-holding spectator just as they clicked through the Eden Gardens turnstiles?
 

2) Do those officials give a toss if forcing Bumble and Co to commentate on happenings in Kolkata from West London rouses even more vigorous vilification?
 

3) Are those officials so convinced of their own invulnerability and so oblivious to the bigger picture that a gracious u-turn cannot be countenanced?

And the correct answers are:

1) Exceedingly doubtful.
 

2) Evidently not.
 

3) Let's bloody well hope not.

Rob Steen is a sportswriter and senior lecturer in sports journalism at the University of Brighton

Feeds: Rob Steen

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

Phone hacking: how News of the World's story unravelled

Tabloid's publisher aggressively denied scandal – until the latest revelations

• Dan Sabbagh
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 July 2011 20.47 BST
• larger | smaller

News of the World will print its last ever edition on Sunday July 10, 2011 – the phone-hacking scandal has forced the tabloid's closure. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
It was a strategy of cover-up, quarter-admission, and foot dragging that took years to unravel – beginning with the first court case brought in the wake of jailing of the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman and the newspaper's £100,000-a-year private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. At the trial it emerged that five others had their phones or messages hacked into – none of whom were members of the Royal family, subjects of Goodman's work – but prominent individuals Simon Hughes, Elle Macpherson, Max Clifford, football agent Sky Andrew and Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballer's Association. Nevertheless, News International chose to gloss over the glaring contradiction of a court case that prompted the resignation of Andy Coulson, as editor, taking the "ultimate sacrifice" for activities he said he was unaware of. In March 2007, the company's then executive chairman Les Hinton was clear that the hacking scandal was narrow in scope. Giving evidence to MPs on the culture media and sport select committee Hinton said, when asked if Goodman was the only person who knew about phone hacking, he replied that "I believe he was the only person" who was aware of the practice and "I believe absolutely that Andy did not have knowledge of what was going on". Despite that, though, it was Gordon Taylor's legal team pursued a court case on his behalf. News International offered Taylor £250,000 to quietly settle the case, but he fought on and as his lawyers obtained evidence from Mulcaire's notebooks and tapes seized by the Metropolitan Police, there was early evidence that hacking practice may have spread wider. Mark Lewis, who was Taylor's solicitor, recalls that it was shortly after the legal team obtained a tape of Mulcaire talking to another journalist (a tape later leaked to the New York Times), that the company's lawyer Tom Crone offered to settle at a higher price. This time Taylor won a massive £700,000 out-of-court settlement. Crucially, though, News International wanted it to remain confidential – which Taylor had little choice but to agree to, given the amount of money on offer. Documents relating to the case were sealed, and the matter would never have become public until the existence of the settlement – signed off by James Murdoch on the recommendation of News of the World editor Colin Myler and Crone – was revealed in July 2009 by the Guardian. That Guardian's report was accompanied by the revelation that private investigators had hacked into "two or three thousand" mobile phones – and the suggestion that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and ex-culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets. Two days later, News International responded late on a Friday afternoon with an aggressive denial, authored it is believed by Crone, with some help from Myler, and corporate communications head Matthew Anderson. It concluded there was no evidence to support the contention that "News of the World or its journalists have instructed private investigators or other third parties to access the voicemails of any individuals" or that "there was systemic corporate illegality by News International to suppress evidence". In reaching the conclusion, News International had two seeming allies. John Yates, the assistant commissioner at the Met, refused to reopen the original investigation into phone hacking, saying that "potential targets may have run into hundreds of people, but our inquiries showed that they only used the tactic against a far smaller number of individuals". Meanwhile, the regulator also chose to take News International's evidence at face value, concluding in its own enquiry in November 2009 it had "seen no new evidence to suggest that the practice of phone message tapping was undertaken by others beyond Goodman and Mulcaire, or evidence that News of the World executives knew about Goodman and Mulcaire's activities". Not everybody was so convinced. A growing number of angry celebrities and politicians began to initiate their own lawsuits in the belief their phones had been hacked. Legal actions gathered momentum in 2010, but News International fought every step of the way, while the Met was slow to share evidence with the claimants and key witnesses like Glenn Mulcaire refused to testify. It was not until December 2010 that Sienna Miller's legal action that alleged that hacking was almost certainly initiated by at least one other journalist – Ian Edmondson, then still employed by the Sunday tabloid. Even then some appeared in denial. In October 2010, Rupert Murdoch, speaking at News Corp's annual meeting, said "there was one incident more than five years ago" before taking aim at the Guardian. "If anything was to come to light, and we have challenged those people who have made allegations to provide evidence … we would take immediate action". Andy Coulson, by now working in Number 10 for David Cameron, said as recently as December of last year in the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial that: "I don't accept there was a culture of phone hacking at the News of the World.". It was not until 2011 – some say at the urging of former Daily Telegraph editor and News International's group general manager Will Lewis – that News International began gradually to soften its stance. Edmondson was dismissed, as it appeared that some of the newspaper's upper-middle ranks could also be under threat. The company stopped contesting the civil cases in April, reaching a £100,000 settlement with Sienna Miller, although that meant News International would avoid the embarassment of court cases were all sorts of additional evidence could have emerged. However, it was not until the Met chose to reopen the criminal enquiry after five years of refusal, handing the job to deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers rather than John Yates, that News Corp had to admit more. With the police trawling over 11,000 pages of notes, suddenly officers found allegations that the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler had been targeted by the newspaper, prompting James Murdoch to concede on Thursday that unnamed "wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad" and that "this was not fully understood or adequately pursued" by those in charge.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

If we care about the BBC, we must fight to defend it

 

Johann Hari

The Tories' plan to scrap impartiality would mean Sky mutating into Fox News

There is a scandal in British politics that is passing almost unnoticed in the night. It will alter the ecology of our politics - and our culture - in ways that will damage us for decades to come.
 
There is one thing most British people think we do best: broadcasting. A recent ICM poll found that 77 per cent think the BBC is an institution to be proud of, and 63 per cent say it is good value for money. This makes the BBC by a long way the most popular public institution in Britain - yet both main political parties are lining up to happy-slap Auntie. The link between the licence fee and the Beeb is about to be broken by a Labour government, and a Tory government will sweep in and widen the gap, while unleashing a snarling pack of Fox News-style hounds across the rest of the channels. And for what? To win the favour of a foreign right-wing billionaire.
 
Let's start with the good news. The BBC works. For just £2.60 a week, the British get a package of the best television and radio in the world. We get the best comedies, the best drama and the best news. There's a reason why we have won seven of the past 10 international Emmies, and the BBC News website is the most popular on earth. As soon as he took power, Nicolas Sarkozy asked how he could make French broadcasting more like ours. It is a model for the world of how to create journalism that isn't contaminated by either corporate advertisers and proprietors on one side, or state ownership on the other. Three independent polls have found that a large majority of Brits would happily pay more for it.
 
Of course we can all find some parts of its output we don't like. I can't stand Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil's blatant editorialising, Chris Moyles, or bogus questions about whether Gordon Brown is popping pills. A right-wing bias still seeps into a lot of its news coverage: see the new book Newspeak by David Edwards and David Cromwell for details. But other people will loathe the parts I love - In Our Time, Start the Week, EastEnders, Question Time, Lauren Laverne, Mark Kermode, BBC4. It's a package: it's impossible for every part to delight every individual. But when there are so many riches, we almost all find something to enjoy: a London Business School found that 99 per cent of us use it every week.
 
Far from becoming outdated, the BBC model is more necessary than ever. Commercial television is losing its ability to produce quality programmes, fast. Advertising money is leaking away to the internet: this week, for the first time, online advertising overtook TV ads in Britain. Revenues are expected to fall by 20 per cent in the next decade, and to continue spiralling after that. As more of us get digital packages that make it possible to record programmes and fast-forward through the ads, it will only get worse. Budgets for shows on commercial channels are in freefall. We won't get good programmes for nothing again. The BBC is the simplest answer, and we are overwhelmingly happy to pay it.
 
So why would our politicians start trashing this system? Rupert Murdoch has long despised the BBC, for the simple reason that although it works well for us, it works badly for him. He can't step in and make a profit by providing his import-filled alternatives, because we're happy with what we have. So he has launched a long campaign through his newspapers to delegitimise the BBC. They relentlessly present it as poor value, biased to the left, and bloated. It's not working with the public: the BBC is 9 per cent more popular today than a decade ago. But he is determined to shrink the BBC to a feeble service like PBS in the US, producing worthy programmes watched by a handful.
 
Despite losing the public argument, Murdoch has another way to exert influence: his newspapers have long applauded the politicians who most serve his interests, and savaged the politicians who lag behind. It's part of a long pattern that stretches across continents. In the debate about The Sun's endorsement of David Cameron this week, many naive observers have acted as if the newspaper is a pressure group with only the interests of the British people at heart, rather than the arm of a corporate machine acting bluntly in its own self-interest.
 
The Labour government began the bidding for Murdoch's favour by proposing - for the first time - to break the link between the licence fee and the BBC. From now on, a chunk of it will be given to other broadcasters like Channel 4 and regional news providers. At first it sounds like a small and reasonable step - it will go to support valuable programming - but it begins a process that will bleed the BBC. You won't be able to see so clearly where your money is going. Gradually, more and more money will be dispersed from the BBC by a Tory government eager to keep Murdoch's favour, and the corporation will shrink back. As it provides less easily traceable value, it will be harder to defend the license fee itself - and Murdoch will win.
 
The Tories then upped the bidding. This summer Ofcom - Britain's broadcasting regulators - found Murdoch's BSkyB guilty of effectively pricing other companies out of the pay-TV market. David Cameron responded by saying he will quietly put Ofcom to sleep, scrapping most of its regulations. Then he gave Murdoch another bauble he has craved for decades: he is going to scrap all the political impartiality rules covering British television (except on the BBC). If Cameron succeeds, Sky News will mutate into Fox News, pumping its poison 24/7. Murdoch duly endorsed the Tories.
 
This quid pro quo is unspoken - there are no meetings in darkened rooms - but Murdoch is quids in nonetheless. His son James Murdoch has been at the forefront of trying to rationalise these grabs for profit. He called the impartiality rules "an impingement on the right to free speech". This is based on a basic error. Your right to free speech - which is the closest thing I have to a sacred belief - doesn't include the right to speak wherever you want. I don't have a primetime show on BBC1 to expound my views, but that doesn't mean I'm being censored. Your right to say what you want doesn't entail a right to say it on the public airwaves. They are a shared public resource, and it is right to regulate them in the public interest.
 
James Murdoch then claimed the BBC "penalises the poorest in our society with regressive taxes and policies". This is hilarious. If James Murdoch is against regressive taxes, why has News International - which makes billions - paid no net taxation in Britain for more than a decade? Why do his newspapers vehemently oppose moves to tax the rich more and the poor less?
After this argument belly-flopped, he claimed the only "guarantor of independence [in broadcasting] is profit". Perhaps he should visit Italy, where the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, owns half the TV channels, and makes them support his political campaigns.
Enough. We can't tolerate a clandestine campaign to trash one of our great national institutions, just so a foreign billionaire can make more profit. Where are these politicians' spines? Where is their patriotism?
 
j.hari@independent.co.uk [j.hari@independent.co.uk]

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