http://www.salford.tv/multimedia/2012/podcasts/podcasts2012.html 36.

40 Jeremy Hunt: But I also think there is an opportunity when we overhaul the regulation of the newspaper industry to recognise what I was talking about, when it comes to local newspapers, that we are in a multimedia age and I think our newspaper industry has an incredibly important contribution to make to our democracy; they make life very uncomfortable for politicians and government and rightly so, because that is their job in a democracy. But they need to reinvent their business model, the elephant in the room in Leveson is the fact that newspapers are losing money and their ability to finance what most people take for granted as a really important part of the democratic process is being undermined by the fact that theyre losing so much money so if, and I propose this, if the industry can come up with a regulatory structure that has the confidence of the public in terms of dealing with the excesses that the public are so shocked by then I will look at whether we can have a single regulatory structure that will cover their entire output whether that TV, online, video on demand or print. I think this could be a very important structural change which would equip them for the future. 37.48 Steve Hewlett: Could that involve OFCOM then regulating the press? Jeremy Hunt: No, I think what Im saying is as things stand at the moment OFCOM will end up regulating all their TV content and the public would want that because they dont have confidence in the way the press have been regulating themselves, but if they can come up with a good structure then we can look at whether itll be possible for that to be the body that 38.12 Steve Hewlett: So you could end up with two regulatory bodies for TV content? Jeremy Hunt: Potentially yeah, but remember youve also got youtube and the whole wild west of the internet as well where there is no regulator. There are different regulatory environments. Steve Hewlett: Do you accept that in effect the internet cant be regulated? Jeremy Hunt:

I accept it would be wrong to try and regulate the internet, whether or not you can, you know the Chinese government would probably say you can, but I dont agree with that in a free society. I dont think that means we cant do more to protect minors from undesirable content and help parents control what is seen by their children but I dont believe there is nothing we can do about piracy online. 38.59 Steve Hewlett: But its not amenable to what weve become used to traditional TV regulation? Jeremy Hunt: No 39.09 Steve Hewlett: In terms of media ownership, because the other thing of course is that the newspapers are losing money, the new media space, the digital space that the more successful ones are finding their way into, thats going to bring about waves of corporate activity consolidation and so on, so on and so on. And so traditional media ownership rules, and remember of course Murdoch, News International and all of that, are widely saying that whats needed is new ownership rules which make it harder for organisations to combine. That does rather cut against the direction that the businesses would take it. What is your view of that? 39.49 Jeremy Hunt: Having plurality of media ownership is incredibly important for our democracy, its really important that no one person or no organisation is able to exert undue control over the filters that we here the news every day and in a free society its very important that we have a proper plurality of voices. Steve Hewlett: Do you think Murdoch had too much? Jeremy Hunt: Well I think what we found was that the structures we had to maintain that plurality were not fit for purpose, because we had a series of structures that I for example asked why it was that in the 2003 Enterprise Act you removed from politicians the ability to arbitrate on big business mergers, because we were worried presumably that politicians might be knobbled by big businesses if they were deciding about an issue like whether BAA should be split up for example, we decided that it was better for that to be decided by an independent regulator. But curiously we left decisions about big media mergers when it came to plurality with politicians and you know that was why I found myself in a position where there was probably not a single person in the whole country who trusted my

motives when I was having to decide on the except for myself there was widely held scepticism, which was why I went through the process very carefully so that I tried to get independent advice at every stage before I took a decision, which I published. But I do think we need to look at how our media plurality laws work, in particular we need to look at the fact that its not just a concentration of media power in a single platform but its a concentration across a number of platforms. 41.47 Steve Hewlett: If any of our major newspaper groups, I think its certainly true of the Mail and it may be true of the Telegraph as well as News International hypothetically got into a position where they were able to buy the whole of BSkyB then that would look like a pretty serious concentration of ownership no matter what who did it. Obviously it happened with News Corporation and News International and all of that, the story we know what Im trying to get at is do you imagine a set of rules which would allow something like that to happen in any circumstances? The drive of business is absolutely towards that sort of convergence. Jeremy Hunt: Well I think convergence needs to happen, in the sense that organisations offering news as their primary product need to be able to offer it across multiple platforms and to be completely neutral about how the consumers of that news access it, but if were trying to guard against concentration of media power then we also need to look at peoples power across different platforms and we need to have a regulatory structure that I mean the piece of analysis that OFCOM did at the start of the BSkyB merger process was I believe the first time that proper analysis had been done of the influence of a media owner across different types of platforms and we need to recognise that that is going to be the norm and we need to have a much clearer strucuture so that everyone knows where they stand. 43.10 Steve Hewlett: Do you think James Murdoch is a fit and proper person to be Chairman of BSkyB? What is your instinct? Jeremy Hunt: Well I think Im going to dodge that. Im going to dodge it because its very clear in law OFCOMs job to make sure all holders of broadcast licenses are fit and proper and all organisations holding broadcast licenses are fit and proper. I think this is an example where the arms length principle is very important, a decision like that is not, it wouldnt be right for me to speculate on that , but I think we also have to say that we need to see how the Leveson inquiry process unfolds, we need to see how the police inquiries unfold before we can make a final decision on these issues and Im sure OFCOM would take the same view.