If Murdoch wasn’t trying to take over the media world it would be firm evidence that he was finally losing his marbles

Raymond Snoddy wonders if the latest witch-hunt against Rupert Murdoch has much substance: “The only real argument is that full ownership of BSkyB will give Murdoch direct control of too much money”…

Even in this secular age you win few plaudits for saying a few kind words about Lucifer.  And for many people there is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of the News Corporation, is the devil incarnate and not a subject susceptible to rational discourse.

As the flak flies over his plan to buy the 60% of Sky he does not already own and rivals gang up – there is no question that Murdoch has done much to earn his demonic reputation. His only genuine interest, political or otherwise, is the institutional success and growth of News Corp.  Everything else is a blind.

His cover-price cost-cutting in 1993 was designed to replace the Daily Telegraph as the number one selling quality daily with the Times. And if the Telegraph was put out of business as a result that would just have been tough. Luckily he failed.

The self-serving attack on the BBC through his son James last year was nothing short of a disgrace.  News Corp in all of its manifestations produces little of the quality routinely offered by the BBC.

However, the Times is almost certainly right when it argued today that BBC director-general Mark Thompson would have been wise to stay aloof from this particular cat-fight.

As the Channel 4 Dispatches programme showed earlier this month, there is also a real case to be answered about the extent of tabloid phone-tapping and indeed the Murdoch influence over Downing Street.

And yet, just maybe the hysteria over the cunning Murdoch BSkyB plan is a touch overblown.  Sometimes even witch-hunts need some defining logic.

Claire Enders has sent her uninvited intervention to business secretary Vince Cable – a strange manifestation as Greg Grimmer noted yesterday in MediaTel’s Newsline.

It’s not just the BBC, just about every Murdoch publishing and media rival has been united in opposition – an even more unusual manifestation.  As if Vince Cable wasn’t busy enough destroying the university education system in this country, never mind his own credibility.

Even Professor Roy Greenslade having initially pronounced Murdoch’s proposed deal as fine, has now had second thoughts and joined the hue-and-cry.

There are only three basic arguments against such a Murdoch deal – apart from those who believe he is a very bad man and will always be a very bad man.  One has substance the others very little.

The main attack is on the grounds of that plurality of media voice would be threatened if the deal went through.  Yet all those media rivals have been united for years in saying – correctly – that Murdoch has always acted as if he already owned all of Sky. So it’s difficult to see what would change in terms of plurality if Murdoch actually got the lot.

Sky News may be too populist for some tastes but its news coverage has always been straight and Fox News is already available by satellite in the UK in the unlikely event that anyone should want to watch it for anything other than anthropological study.

Then there is the view that full ownership would allow Murdoch to bundle services across television and newspapers… Get The Times half price if you are a premium Sky subscriber.  If such a thing was permitted by regulators, then there would be very little to prevent Murdoch orchestrating such a commercial deal between BSkyB and News International now.

The really substantial argument, and it is one that will inevitably be considered by the competition authorities because of the size of the deal, is that full ownership of BSkyB will give Murdoch direct control of too much money.

As has been widely noted, Sky is coming to the end of a long investment phase, which has established everything from broadband to HD.  Obviously Murdoch has his eye on the growing stream of profits that should now flow.

There is an obvious problem here. The majority shareholders of BSkyB, mainly institutions, are very well aware of this and are hardly likely to give away their stake for nothing. An offer of 700p has been rejected. Some in the City say he would have to go to at least 800p and perhaps even closer to 900p to close the deal. That would involve having to raise around £10 billion even before facing the regulatory hurdles. Not exactly a slam dunk.

But there is a larger question. How well is Rupert Murdoch actually doing?  Is he anxious to get his hands on BSkyB to underpin his global cash flow rather than cut a new swathe through the British media?

The most recent annual results show profits of £1.57 billion though they were heavily influenced by the success of Avatar and improving advertising revenues for both TV stations and newspapers.

But Murdoch massively overpaid for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, MySpace is a disaster and Sky Italia is facing growing competition from Berlusconi’s Mediaset.

There are no official numbers on The Times and Sunday Times paywall experiment yet – nor will there be for some time – but the body language is not good.  News International executives are starting to say it’s not all about the numbers.  Right.

Overall, the Murdoch BSkyB issue smells like a normal business deal rather than a particularly fiendish plot to take over the media world – again.  Indeed if he wasn’t trying it would be firm evidence that Murdoch was finally losing his marbles.

The Times is also right on another thing today. It expects Vince Cable to be guided by the law on this issue and not by pressure groups.  That’s not such a bad place to start.