In the furore raging over the Murdochs’ plans to purchase the 61% of the shares in BSkyB that they don’t already own, it isn’t only competing national newspapers who are fearful of the combined might of News International and BSkyB in this country; millions of punters, ordinary Joes, voters like you and me, would see the resulting media conglomerate as deeply damaging to our democracy.
    It’s unhealthy enough that NI should control 37% of national newspaper circulation in this country through the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World. With leading (if mightily slipshod) publishers Harper Collins in its stable, News Corp (the global entity) can call in many favours from writers it has paid handsomely to publish. It can demand of them that its global interests be immune from adverse comment. It already wields considerable influence and earns profits from the 39% of Sky which it currently owns. With the rest of the Sky shares in its bag, the powerful cross-references that will allow between its print, broadcast, American TV and movie property, Fox  and internet media (MySpace), its influence will become almost unchallengeable. 
    And now with unreconstructed ShagRag editor and truth juggler Andy Coulson lurking by the door of the cabinet office, News Corp have their own placeman in  Downing Street with a direct conduit to Rupert Murdoch through his close friend and former boss, the TestaRossa, Rebekah Brooks. The millions (60%) of us who voted for Cameron or Clegg did not have any intention of voting for Murdoch, pere et fils, and we must join the battle to contain, even reduce the extent of the Murdochs’ media reach.
   We can’t sit back and leave it to the unlikely alliance of the Barclay Bros,  Paul Dacre, Trinity-Mirror and the Obserguardian (where are the Indie in all this?) to fight the Murdochs without any help from us.
There’s a lot that the punter in the street and the ordinary Joe like you and me can do.
We can cancel our Sky sub, or refuse to sign up, and learn to live without Champions League Footer or House or Mad Men. If enough do it long enough and determinedly enough, Sky would no longer be able consistently to outbid the BBC and ITV for these properties.
We can stop buying Murdoch ShagRags and buy the Mirror, even, God help us, the Daily Star instead (which, at least, is cheaper). We can swap the Times and Sunday Times to one of the three other high quality broadsheets published in this country (four, if you include the specialist but broad enough FT).

And important or best-selling authors, or their estates,  like Jonathan Franzen, Bernard Cornwell, Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich, Paul Coelho, Colleen McCollough, Joanne Harris and Frank Delaney should not contract with Harper Collins to publish their work.

A well-supported boycott can and often does work, if enough right-thinking people care.

 For the sake of Freedom of Expression and the right of commentators of differing views to air them, we must support the papers who are lobbying the Government to do whatever it takes to block the Murdochs’ total control of BSkyB.

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 Max Clifford has accepted £1m in what is described not as compensation for invasion of privacy (which is what it is) but as “costs” and a “personal payment” from the News of the World. A Court Order rescinding the Feb 3rd request for disclosure by Mulcaire and of the Screws’ settlement with Gordon Taylor, also states that there shall be no order as to costs, and makes no mention of a settlement, which effectively allows the Screws to deny any wrongdoing, despite this massive pay out to avoid having to make the potentially catastrophic disclosures ordered at the request of Clifford’s lawyers.

No wonder the deal has taken so long to work out, with all this give and take, though it seems likely, with Max holding the whip hand, and Ol’ Rumplechops hopping around in New York, worried shitless about the truth coming out, that he could have held out for a great deal more. After all, Les Hinton was in charge of News International at the time of their Royal phone hacking debacle, and there are few who doubt he knew what was going on, at leat as much as managing editor Stuart Kuttner (who master-minded the scheme), head of legals, Tom Crone and Andy Coulson, who was editor at the time. This is a big problem for Murdoch who is desperate to be perceived as a respectable, major player in New York, as the proprietor of the pre-eminent Wall Street Journal, which Les Hinton now fronts up for Rupert.

I understand that everyone has their price, as Rupert knows well. Since the Royal phone-hacking prosecution revealed five more victims, the Screws have already paid off Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the hacks who’d been hung out to dry. They have also given a fat fee to Elle Macpherson for an interview (by Sarah Brown, for heaven’s sake!) in their “Crapulous!” magazine, in which pages are devoted to plugging her range of knickers. They’ve paid Gordon Taylor and his minions c £1m in costs and damages.

But a lot of us were hoping Max would abide by his pledge, issued when he launched his claim against the Screws, that his principal aim was to uncover the Truth. He didn’t especially need the money (and anyway said he would give any proceeds of the suit to children’s health charities.)  If he hadn’t take Rupert’s tainted money and  persisted with his claim, and won (which he almost certainly would have done), he’d have been lucky to be awarded  £30K – £50K, but the News of the World, the Metropolitan Police and Glenn Mulcaire would have been forced to produce details which would have had disastrous effects, possibly leading to widened charges over the original phone-hacking crimes.

So, the Murdoch’s have sort of got away with it this time (for a £1m + their own costs), but the temptation for the growing number of confirmed Screws’ targets to ask for more of the same has been magnified. It only needs one whose sense of public duty outstrips their own greed to go all the way, and force them to throw into the public domain details of endemic illegal news-gathering.   

And back in Romania, Albania, and probably still in London,too, is a band of men who have been falsely accused, imprisoned on remand and subsequently acquitted as a result of fabricated stories cobbled together by disgraced Screws Investigations Editor, Mazher Mahmood. In the currrent climate, these victims of the Screws’ outrageous attitude to Truth and Justice could offer a profitable project for a good, hungry lawyer.

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The House of Commons Culture Media Sport Committee Inquiry into Press Standards continued today, 10th March in Portcullis House, with FIA boss Max Mosley in the hot seat. He’d asked if he could address the MPs, and they had – I imagine readily – agreed to question him.

His aim is to see law created that will prevent the loss of dignity that he has suffered, happening to other, sometimes less well-off British citizens. His own private cat is out of the bag and has bolted several times round the world since the News of the World posted their illegal video of his private S&M party on their unedifying website.

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