On July 11th, the Slovak public service TV, STV, in its main evening news bulletin spared 20 seconds on one of the biggest media crises in the UK or perhaps the world. It selected one and only one aspect of the crisis: Rupert Murdoch and the failure of his business expansion. Indeed, it is impossible to squeeze in more, such as the crisis in police ranks or of the British journalism. And as the facts were too sparse, inaccurate and incomplete to hold the attention of the public, the presenter must have decided to entertain the viewers by infusing those precious 20 seconds with as many mistakes as she could fit in. And not just in the pronunciation of the proper names. She failed to name the BSkyB company as the one R. Murdoch wants to buy off in the UK, she resorted just to a 'network of British TV stations' instead. She said that 'after the hacking affair the contract is in unforeseeable future'. After! She suggested that the affair was over, whereas the power struggle is just beginning. It is a standard behaviour for the Slovak media to serve inaccurate and incomplete information to their audiences because they know that no one will ever complain against the practice. Why bother finding out exact facts and verify the pronunciation of such famous names like Rupert Murdoch? However, every cloud has a silver lining and STV deserves credit for running the news item for 20, albeit farcical, seconds; the TA3 channel that stylizes itself as a rolling news channel, has had no mention of the affair at all.
And the headline of the whole news item was: the
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