NOTW-News International-Murdoch scandal

I must confess, I have no particular antipathy towards Murdoch. While I think his anti-monarchy, anti-EU line has damaged British politics and he is pretty craven to Chinese interests -nonetheless he is a fairly restrained media mogul.

However, no democracy should tolerate one person or organisation controlling large chunks of the media. It robs us of the pluralist discussion which is the greatest strength of a democracy.

Though noone can know for sure, it looks very likely that these scandals are not about phone-tapping at all. Over the last number of years there has been a series of clashes between the murdoch press and the British establishment, ranging over superinjunctions, phone-tapping, paparazzi tactics, spying on royals etc.. The pattern is the same and there has been a gradual, but perceptible increase in Murdoch's struggles to get his way with the British powers that be. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that somewhere in the British establishment, a decision has been made to clip his wings a bit and reduce the influence of News International on British politics. The struggle over superinjunctions, phone-tapping, police bribes etc. appear to simply be theatres for a broader struggle.

The heat has clearly been turned up on this struggle in recent weeks, and the most explosive revelations have only come recently. The phonetapping of a teenage murder victim, bereaved families of war casualties etc. is public relations dynamite. So much so that Murdoch has had to close one newspaper and postpone his takeover of BSkyB.
But the real question is whether it will rest there? Will this movement against press centralisation carry forward to see legislative controls created for media ownership?

What is really needed is for a special competition regime to exist to ensure pluralist ownership of private media outlets. I have not heard anyone raise the possibility yet, but MPs and the public are furious and it is difficult to imagine such a proposal failing if it was put before the House of Commons tomorrow.

I certainly do hope that such a regime is created, it would be a massive boon to British democracy. A generous transitional period could be permitted to allow Murdoch exit with his wealth intact, but ultimately, it is vital that no person or organisation be permitted to control more than a small fraction of the media (apart from the BBC).

I wonder how Denis O'Brien feels about all this?

A simple tweak to create representative Governments.

A discussion topic I just kicked off on a matter of national concern. I think this gets to the heart of the poor performance of Irish democracy.

http://www.wethecitizens.ie/talk/article/representative_government_coalitions




Currently, the Dáil elects the Taoiseach who appoints a Government from amongst his/her own followers. As Taoisigh are chosen by the Dáil on partisan lines, they then proceed to select Governments on partisan lines, reinforcing tribal politics. Instead of forming a Government that is representative of the Dáil (and therefore of the people's choices at General Elections), we end up with Governments of one tribe or another, representing only a segment of Irish society. The entrenchment of partisan politics means Dail debates focus on highlighting divisions between the parties rather than the details of the issues before the house.

I propose that the Taoiseach's power to select the Government should be subject to the results of the General election (or more precisely, the make-up of the Dáil). The Taoiseach, when presenting a Government to the Dáil should have to secure approval from a supermajority (80%) of Deputies, or if he/she is unable to secure this supermajority, then the Government should be selected directly by the Dáil in a Proportional Representative (PR) vote.

The advantages of this would be that the Government (the principal decision-making organ of the State) would be more representative of the Dáil as a whole and therefore of the choices made by the electorate. Taoisigh will have the chance to form a representative Government(exercising some choice as to what would be a workable team), but if the Dáil feels that the Taoiseach's selection does not represent the broad opinions of the Dáil (i.e. more than 20% of Deputies are aggrieved by the make-up of the Taoiseach's proposed team), then they can directly select the Cabinet. In practice, there would always be a cross-party deal to allow the Taoiseach to win the supermajority vote, but not without making concessions to minority voices, and under the threat of having the power to form the Government taken from his/her hands if he/she fails to build a broadly based coalition. A baldly partisan Government would be impossible. Broadly based coalitions would represent the people as a whole, taking decisions in the general interest, being less indulgent of underperformance by their colleagues, and less beholden to sectional groups. Cooperative deliberation instead of sectional fighting would begin to define Dáil and Government debates. The current preference for backbiting over deliberation would lose its appeal if the Government was representative of the Dáil's make-up.

The principal disadvantage would be that we would be sacrificing the position of strength that has been invested with every Taoiseach since the 1937 Bunreacht. Our 1937 constitution (as was the trend in 1930s Europe) focused on creating a strong individual at the heart of the State, to be in a position to direct all the resources of the State to combat specific problems, especially threats to security. This principle has served us well (though in the rest of Europe it was a disaster), and the Taoiseach has always had the clout to mobilise any resources available to combat security threats. By depriving him/her of the power to dominate the Dáil, we will lose the ability to focus the State's efforts on a particular priority issue. We cannot have deliberative democracy without sacrificing authorative Taoisigh.