Essentially, either you allow competition (and thus the possibility of a monopoly) or you end up with a mess of government regulation and intervention which sets a very bad precedent (at least in my opinion).
No offense but I felt like I had to wash my hands after reading this. The "mess of governmental regulations" you're referring to that exists in every industry to prevent monopolization is vital for the stability of an economy...there are many reasons the boom/bust cycle before the World War II era was much more volatile than it is now, but one of them is a vast amount of anti-trust legislation that has prevented the consolidation in many industries, which helps keep competition healthy and brings a more equitable distribution of wealth. We've moved away from that in the past 30 or so years and we've seen unhealthy consolidation in a lot of industries, particularly telecommunications and certain aspects of finance. This was done in the name of efficiency, using the exact logic you used in your post. I won't claim that this was a cause of the financial crisis but I believe they're correlated.
But that's entirely besides the point. Whether or not anti-trust regulations for the media are efficient or not is completely irrelevant. The media is a public good. It has an immeasurable impact on how people view the world and politics in particular, especially in the modern world with the popularity of the television. Peoples' worldview is more profoundly shaped by the media than ever before. Maintaining the healthy state of this good is extremely important for the citizens of that nation as well as the audience in other parts of the globe and it is vital for the well-being of a democracy. The media as a whole has an immense amount of political power because of how much influence it has over the popular perception of politics. When the press is freer and comprised of a variety of sources, this isn't an issue. When one entity controls a significant portion of it, whether it is the state or a large corporate conglomerate, the press is less free, gravely endangering the fairness of the political process.
What's worse with private consolidation of the media is that the public has little to no control over it...if the state controls too large a share of the media (we're assuming this is a liberal democracy because there is a free press), the public can exercise its votes to change the policies: perhaps by changing the personnel involved in running the media outlets or the amount of organizations or sources (channels, papers, etc.) available or changing the laws to allow allow more private competition, among other things. When the media is monopolized by huge conglomerates, however, as is the case in the US and Britain, the public has little to no control over the matter. We have no real way to 'vote them out' or to change who controls our media and what sources are given access to media outlets.
And equally as important is the goal of these institutions. In this day and age where the public depends so much on the media for information and in which the public's perception is so heavily influenced by it, the journalistic integrity of the media is of paramount importance. This public good in this case is so important that we are much better off having media sources whose sole purpose is one of journalistic duty and not of profit. These two are fundamentally different, and the public suffers as a result of only having access to large corporate media outlets who only care about profits and not the quality or objectivity of the immensely important journalistic service that they provide to the public.
There's a reason that my homepage is the BBC and not some ****** American newspaper. It's because the BBC is one of the best institutions of journalism in the world and it's due in no small part to the fact that that is their goal instead of profit.
But it's his right to do so. Competition is good, but he's smashed all competitors so far.
It's not his "right" to do so. Luckily we live in some sort of democracy and the public has a voice in how our economy is managed. Businessmen must act within the confines of whatever policy the public decides is best for the nation as a whole. In any modern, civilized country, there are strict rules (well, not quite as much in the past two or three decades or so) against the consolidation of industries so that there is healthy and fair competition. This is good for the economy and it is good for the public. I don't know the specifics of the laws in Britain, although my guess is that Murdoch has amassed this empire legally thanks to the push Britain has made towards deregulation in all areas in the past few decades. Hopefully the public comes to its senses and starts to clamp down a bit so that it's not this bad for future generations. And as far as "smashing competition goes," whether or not he is doing so legally it's not healthy for the economy and it isn't fair either. Although it may be possible in the libertarian Rayndian fantasy world a lot of people live in, in this industry in particular there is no way some mom and pop newspaper or TV station can seriously challenge the Murdoch empire. And even if it did, Murdoch would simply buy it up. That is not fair, it is not sound economically, and it is bad for the health of Britain's democracy. I find it disgusting that you're trying to defend this, that your first thought would be to value what you perceive to be efficiency, and more importantly his "right" to amass this empire, over any of the other values I've just expressed (democracy, freedom of thought, the economy as a whole, the British public, etc. etc.)
God damnit, the man is successful! Annul his property rights and steal, I mean redistribute, what he owns! He's also changed his political allegiance depending on who's in power, who gave him free will!?
He's successful at amassing a vast amount of wealth ultimately at the expense of the British populace in many different ways. Again, why on earth would you even think to value that over the good of Britain's democracy, society, and economy, among other things? And cleaning up the regulations within Britain's media industry certainly doesn't have to mean annuling his property "rights."