The Beeb and the Babe

There's no sign of any let-up in the Murdoch empire's assault on the BBC. Today The Times leads with the story that 37 BBC executives earn more than the Prime Minister. (How many Murdoch executives earn more than the PM? None of your business...but we'll come back to that).

There's nothing new about this line of attack. In the late 1920s the highest-paid sportsman in America was Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees. (Pop quiz: what was the Babe's real name? Answer at the end of this posting). Chided by the press for making more money than the President, the Babe had a simple response: "I had a better year".

Considering the kind of year Gordon Brown has had, it's certain that everyone on The Times's list could use that defence. But that's not really the point, is it? Is there any logic at all to the Times's barely-hidden implication that people in the public sector should never earn more than the PM? On what basis is Gordon Brown the appropriate comparator when deciding how much money Alan Yentob should be paid? Or, assuming for a second that this is not just about the BBC, though for Murdoch it probably is, how much a top surgeon or the administrator of a failing hospital should get? Yentob could very easily score a job elsewhere; the surgeon has years of training and could undoubtedly make more in private medicine or by moving abroad. Does anyone seriously think that Gordon Brown could step into a better-paying job at will?

Most people's remuneration is decided by the market, something that Murdoch is generally all in favour of. Now of course, the BBC hasn't helped its own cause by overpaying some of the on-air "talent". There's nobody out there who would be willing to pay Jonathan Ross what he currently pulls down from the Beeb, as I suspect Jonathan may soon find out. Almost as certainly, there's nobody at News International not named Murdoch who's in Ross's pay bracket -- though of course, unlike the BBC, News International isn't under any pressure from the media to disclose that. But Ross and a few other high profile individuals are the exception rather than the rule, and the BBC has already called a halt to the gravy train.

This cynical and hypocritical attack on the BBC is a foretaste of the sort of thing we can expect if Murdoch succeeds in his lobbying efforts to remove the obligation on news broadcasters to be free of bias. There are distressing signs that the Tories are in the process of selling their souls to Murdoch, bartering promises of regulatory changes for his support in the next election. I wonder how much Murdoch pays Fox News's rabid on-air attack dog, Glenn Beck? It may not be too long before we see him and his "fair and balanced" views on the air here.

And the Babe's real name? George Herman Ruth.