Media Matters for America President Angelo Carusone sent a letter to the U.K.'s chief broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, highlighting a number of recent developments -- all of which concern Fox News -- that are pertinent to Ofcom’s investigation into the potential takeover of Sky PLC by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, Fox News’ parent company. These developments include:
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Murdoch and his sons have paid only lip service to the company’s toxic culture of sexual harassment and discrimination, which has prompted several lawsuits, a federal investigation, and the ouster of top executives
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Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity has gone without discipline after pushing baseless and irresponsible conspiracy theories, even as Hannity's volatility led to several major advertisers dropping their ads from his show
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Fox News’ prime-time lineup -- replacing Bill O’Reilly -- is just as biased and fact-free as ever
The recent developments detailed in Media Matters' letter to Ofcom further underscore that Murdoch and his sons fail to satisfy the conditions necessary to acquire British satellite broadcasting company Sky in full and expose dangers that the bid for Sky would pose to the British public and to the British media landscape.
The letter from Carusone follows a March 30th report Media Matters submitted in partnership with global activism group Avaaz to Ofcom that detailed the risks Rupert Murdoch’s desired takeover of Sky poses to British broadcasting standards.
Before that, Media Matters and Avaaz submitted a report to Secretary Karen Bradley of the U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport that demonstrated that the risk of Foxification is too great to simply rubber-stamp a Murdoch takeover. On March 16, U.K. Culture Secretary Bradley referred Murdoch's takeover bid to Ofcom for a thorough investigation on the grounds of “media plurality and commitment to broadcasting standards.” The findings of the Ofcom investigation are due by June 20th.
21st Century Fox already owns 39.1 percent of Sky. Murdoch abandoned a previous bid for full ownership in light of the investigation into mass hacking at his U.K.-based newspapers. Following an investigation, a parliamentary report found that Murdoch was “not a fit person” to run a major corporation, and that his son James (who at the time ran the parent company of News Of The World and The Sun and is now the CEO of 21st Century Fox) showed “wilful ignorance” of the industrial-scale hacking. In September of 2016, it was reported that Fox News had engaged in similar tactics, hacking the phone of Media Matters reporter Joe Strupp.