left to itself, the market would throw up a vibrant and pluralist broadcasting industry

There is an interesting aftermath to James Murdoch's controversial MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival according to Philip Stevens writing in the FT this morning who says that the younger Murdoch was

at least half-right in his recent broadside against the overmighty BBC. He was just as wrong in his analysis that, left to itself, the market would throw up a vibrant and pluralist broadcasting industry.

adding that

Murdoch's prescription for the media landscape - sacrificing public service broadcasting to a Hobbesian struggle for market supremacy that he supposes he would ultimately win - may have the opposite effect. Slimming down the BBC is one thing; dismantling it in the cause of liberal market fundamentalism is another.