 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Media magnate Rupert Moldock's News International is in the news recently for the closure of its sensational tabloid News of the World. The tabloids phone hacking ways in the United Kingdom had created a massive public outcry and that forced the tabloid to close after a long run. So, to discuss with us Moldock, Moldock in the doc and Moldockization of the media in general we have with us, it is 79 million, the editor of the popular media watchdog website The Hoot. Thanks for coming on to NewsClick. In one sense Moldock's ways of sensationalizing news, his ways of dominating the media empire has been called into scrutiny after this news of the world scandal. But some say it's just a blip and soon it will be business as usual. Do you think so as well? No, see Moldock has a huge empire, all of which is not news. And his news empire, I think Britain was, even though it counts for very little financially, Britain was his biggest area of influence. In Britain certainly he will take a beating. His plans for television, just the fact that he has to call off his bid for B Sky B is a hit, it's a major hit. Also because of the 9-11 angle, his other influential news base was the US and we don't know how that's going to unravel in the future. But overall I think Moldock is too big and has to diversified an empire to be financially affected too much by this. What's more profound about this episode is that it's not just about paying of law enforcement agencies and so on and so simply the fact that Moldock has been able to buy off or rather threaten off political pressure or by the virtue of his papers being sold the most in the country and he's being able to set the agenda in some sense. That's true of what Moldock's news channels in America is doing for example. Not entirely, the three huge mainstream networks. Fox is simply a counter to them. But at the same time Moldock's networks actually push a very deeply right with the agenda. They push a conservative agenda. Yeah, especially in the UK for example and they have even been able to manipulate antagonistic political parties, the Labour Party for example by subverting it from within by supporting Tony Blair and so on and so forth. The question however is do you think such a trend is also visible in India or just an exaggeration? India is different, it's huge. There's no question of any one media empire having influence on any one ruling party. There are several which who are equally influential. Also in India, the political parties themselves have started majorly getting into acquiring media. So they don't depend entirely on the commercial media for their influence peddling. But the form of agenda building that we see in the UK and the US you think doesn't happen in Indian media? You know in the Indian media there's a huge amount of diversity. For every Hindu there is a pioneer. So there are ideological counterpulls. There's television which simply does its own market thing. So you can't influence it beyond a point. But having said that certain I mean except for honorable exceptions you know coverage of let's say the economic crisis from the point of view of Labour and the peasantry increase scrutiny on the corporates that seems to be lacking to a certain extent. No that's that it is true that they scrutinize politicians much more than they scrutinize corporates partly because largely because of the influence of advertising because all of our media is hugely dependent on advertising. But the fact remains that even that as you know it's every time something breaks then you can't ignore it beyond a point. So if there's a radio kind of episode then industrial houses will come under scrutiny and for every guy who doesn't scrutinize them somebody else will because we've had a huge growth and diversification of the media. Another aspect of the Muldakification you can use that term is that there is a blurring of the lines between news coverage, editorializing and advertisement that's at least visible in the Muldak press. Now in some sense some newspapers in the country do follow. See we don't have I don't think in India we had to look to Muldak to commercialize. I mean the Times Group has done its own thing you know if they commercialize or if they start selling news or they set any other trend which is highly questionable in terms of ethics then I don't necessarily think inspiration for that was got from Muldak I don't think selling news is done by you know. The way papers were structured is that news and editorial were different you know departments in one sense but you find in editorialization is creeping into news and the interest of the proprietor and the advertisers actually reflected in the editorial pages and so on and so forth. Now that necessarily might not be drawn from Rupur Muldak alone but he is seen as you know embodying that trend in one sense. He's seen as contributing to sensationalization. Foxification is I mean you know the Fox news brand is seen as where you turn very aggressive and you blur the line between comment and news. So all of that we are seeing here. We are seeing it in channels like Times Now and then we also have other channels which stick to a more basic news formula. Muldak I mean he is owner of a large media monopoly and we see certain I mean even though diversification is there in the Indian press and the Indian media there is also a trend towards monopolization in terms. There is cross ownership but and you know it becomes a problem in a place like Tamil Nadu where you have a political ownership which is highly influential and then he has newspapers as well as television as well as radio and so the scope for it is there at a national level it's unlikely to be simply because there's so many players and simply because the country is so huge and has so many regional dimensions to it. It is unlikely to be but we need to have cross media restrictions and law makers have not been able to come up with good solutions. So you do think that certain laws and regulations have to be. No for you know in regions you need cross media because you know the Sakshi TV in Andhra Pradesh you have TV you have newspaper they're huge they have a lot of money it's political. When you have TRS and you know Telangana again they have their own newspaper now and their own channel so partly because it's politically owned you certainly need cross media restriction. When you have a political party controlling various forms of this thing then you get bombarded with only one form of opinion. Then you have another political party but where is the space then for non-political news which can hold its own against the money that's being poured and everybody else is a viable media thing they don't you know they don't have other money. But is there also commercial danger I mean this is also danger from the commercialization of this process I mean in the sense that because of cross ownership because certain media groups are quite huge so they are able to subsidize other. Yeah I mean obviously times TV channels don't make money or at least certainly times now doesn't make money but you know the paper is so wealthy so when you yeah they are able to subsidize a voice in another media. So Mr. Murdoch by the way never made any money either you know on a lot of his newspapers you know. So what is the lesson that you think the Indian press gets out of this incident. Well first of all you must understand that the Indian press is not operating in a similar society we do not have red top tabloids in this country even if we have tabloids they are what is known as black top you don't have these kind of sensational things you don't have a society which permits prying or you don't have owners who would put large sums of money into hack anybody's phone or to buy off you know so we don't have that culture. So I think that we don't need to try and apply but yes the cross media thing is we've been reminded of it in other ways also we need cross media regulations and possibly in some centers if not all over.