"One of the most gripping moments of BBC’s documentary mini-series “The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty”, was near the end of the third and final part. The celebrated playwright Dennis Potter was being interviewed on television just before he died of cancer. Potter told Melvyn Bragg that he called his cancer – “the main one, the pancreas one” – Rupert, after Murdoch, who was then a mere newspaper proprietor. “There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press,” said Potter, “and the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life.” That was back in 1994, long before Sky TV, long before Fox News, long before phone-hacking, long before Murdoch became the most powerful media figure of all time.
We can only guess what Potter would have thought of the corruption and abuse of power that was laid bare over three hours in the BBC documentary – the making and breaking of Prime Ministers and Presidents, the bending of government policy to favour business objectives, the criminal intrusion into people’s lives. Given the way in which the various instruments of the Murdoch empire have attacked the BBC down the years, it was brave of the corporation to commission this series, but I couldn’t help wondering: why now?"
inews.co.uk/opinion/bbc-murdoch-documentary-power-james-murdoch-shouted-566091