The communications committee of Britain’s House of Lords recently paid a visit to American news broadcasters including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News. The AP reports the group is looking into the U.K.’s media ownership rules and news coverage. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, who owns media properties in the U.S. and the U.K., including Sky News, talked with the panel. The minutes were released to the press late last week. Here is a portion of the AP story:
Murdoch said Sky News — the UK TV news station operated by BSkyB, which is 39 percent owned by a subsidiary of News Corp. — could be more popular if it emulated his Fox News Channel in America.
Fox News is considered as more partisan than UK news broadcasters, but Murdoch said Britain’s impartiality rules would not prevent Sky News from becoming more like Fox. The only reason that hasn’t already happened, he said, is that “nobody at Sky listens to me.”
And from a Guardian Unlimited story:
Murdoch said he wanted Sky News, which has confounded cynics by maturing into a well-funded and award-winning 24-hour news operation, to be more like Fox News to make it “a proper alternative to the BBC”.
Due to the lack of impartiality laws in the US, Fox News became successful as a rightwing counterpoint to the perceived leftwing leanings of its rivals.