Thursday 15 December 2011

To few media owners

I watched a piece on Liverpool Football Clubs TV channel about a fundraiser for the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and justice for the 96.

Long before the News of the World hacking scandal, Hillsborough showed the corruption of an over powerful newspaper in tandem with police and politicians who colluded with the media to portray football fans poorly to protect the incompetence of the organs of the state.

This was an early lesson and strongly chimes with my core belief, that injustice is destructive and needs to be tackled, whether by the state or private business.

The powerful have the tools, the power and the wealth to protect themselves, whether private Newspaper companies, incompetent police (as was the case at Hillsborough)and bigoted governments and the judges will side with the establishment as they are deeply conservative in their thinking.

The need to tackle vested interests is essential, too few owners of the media, too much power concentrated, as we see with the current Levenson inquiry, with sections of the media was out of control, with apparent disregard of law, for a healthy democracy, there is a need for a diverse, open and accountable media.

There appears to be little protection for the little person, the Press Complaints system, is a sham, there is no power to investigate or punish poor news pieces in the newspapers.

Even this last week the former editor of the News International title that lied about Liverpool fans in 1989 had to retract a statement he made on the BBC this week, so tabloid sorts don't change.

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