I must admit to being quite fascinated by the performance of Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson enquiry – and it is indeed a performance. There is a power struggle at play which just begs for analysis: I am reminded of the accounts of trials of kings or ex presidents, where men used to wielding great power and respect are interrogated and spoken to like commoners. Their power has been stripped away. It must be so strange for Murdoch, so used to having the rulers of the world eating out of his hand. Mind you, it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve: he may have had a bit of a go at the bbc (albeit less of a rant than I was expecting) but I think it is he, not the beeb, who is responsible for the puerile state of the British media today. He is the one who has tried to turn the British mediascape into commercial-infested pap; this morning he tried to use his time at the stand as a soapbox, denouncing the rise of alternative news outlets, including us bloggers, but to his credit lord Leveson nipped that in the bud. In other words, I could see that Murdoch was trying to bend proceedings to his own advantage,, but for once failing. It made for quite fascinating viewing, and I’m sure better writers than me will be penning intriguing deconstructions of it as I type. It was as if we were watching great men being undone, yet clinging desperately to the belief that they were still great. What the ramifications of this weeks’ events will be remains to be seen – it should, by rights, have already brought about Jeremy Hunt’s resignation; the fact that we haven’t seen that tells us all we need to know about this tory government. I’m sure it’ll continue to unfold, and I’ll stay glued to it, much to lyn’s chagrin. She, probably wisely, sees all this as some tiresome sideshow, and wheels back into her studio to get on with some real work.