Business Secretary Vince Cable has said there should be "clear" rules on how powerful media groups can be, in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

He told the BBC having dominant media moguls was "deeply unhelpful" - partly due to their political impact.

There should be market share limits and a "presumption against" media groups owning both newspapers and TV stations.

He was responsible for media ownership rules until he was recorded saying he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch.

Following the undercover recording by the Daily Telegraph in December, Mr Cable was stripped of his responsibility for overseeing Mr Murdoch's bid to take full control of broadcaster BSkyB.

That bid was withdrawn this month amid new phone-hacking allegations and in the face of political opposition.

Holy crap!
I actually agree with Vince Cable.

Be wary of the law of unintended consequences. If this went through then you can probably see quite a few newspapers going under, reducing peoples choice and concentrating "power" into fewer and fewer people.

The large majority of newspapers in the UK don't make a profit. That suggests few people are actually reading them, in the main. At least too few to sustain them. I really can't bring myself to care about the continuing existence of a medium that a) largely sold it's soul years ago and b) Can't even convince enough people to pay for it to keep itself above the water.

As i said in another post, the power of the newspapers in the UK is illusory, dissipated and almost entirely self-proclaimed. And given the events of the past week, probably lost forever.

We survive without gas-powered street lights any more, we'd survive without newspapers.

Jon

Daily Mirror: 1,170,541; -6.3

Daily Record: 305,840; -5.4

Daily Star: 708,163; -12.6

The Sun: 2,806,746; -5.8

Daily Express: 621,871; -6.4

Daily Mail: 2,047,206; -2.2

The Daily Telegraph: 622,719; -8.6

Financial Times: 356,194; -9.1

The Herald: 48,465; -9

The Guardian: 256,283; -10.4

Thats still a lot of people who buy a paper.