As Victor Meldrew once said "I do not believe it" By TITVS ADVXAS

So James Murdoch or "Rupee Junior", the son of that obnoxious antipodean media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, has had a pop at Auntie Beeb, calling it "State controlled"?

And the nauseating response by the BBC was tongue firmly in cheek, like a spat between old buddies.

It even received a spot on the main evening news, as well as a decent sized article on the BBCi website.

News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media "with relish".

"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision," Mr Murdoch said.

He was giving the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

Mr Murdoch said that organisations like the BBC, funded by the license fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom made it harder for other broadcasters to survive.

"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and growing."

News Corporation lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been "the most difficult in recent history".

Other media organisations are also struggling as advertising revenues have dropped during the downturn.

Mr Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.

"It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," he said.

News Corporation has said it will start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

It owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

Rupert Murdoch addressed the same festival 20 years ago.

The lecture was just a let off of steam for the mouthpiece of a company that controls more of the media that the state controlled corporation.

The lecture touched on many truths, but raises the question: Which is worse, a UK media network controlled by the whim of a non-English mouthpiece or a UK media network controlled by the whim of Rupert Murdoch?

©TITVS-ADVXAS XXVIII-VIII-MMIX
As Published