London
A top BBC official this week launched an unprecedented broadside at Rupert Murdoch, claiming the media magnate is trying to “undermine” the British national broadcaster. Newspapers and TV stations owned by Murdoch have been loudly critical of the BBC in recent weeks, after a BBC reporter’s accusation that the government had “sexed up” its report on Iraq’s weapons turned out to be false. One Murdoch-owned station called for the abolishment of the mandatory fee that every TV owner pays the BBC each year. That’s when Lorraine Heggessey, director of BBC1, spoke up, denouncing Murdoch to the London Independent in unusually personal terms. “He is against everything the BBC stands for,” Heggessey said. “He is a capitalist imperialist, isn’t he?”
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