Deputy Labour party leader Harriet Harman has come under the scrutiny of The Times' leader after calling for a 15 per cent media ownership cap to stop companies feeling that they are "above the rule of law", questioning where the BBC would fit into the proposals.
The shadow secretary of state for culture said in a speech at the Charles Wheeler Lecture on journalism on Thursday that the concentration of "unaccountable media power" distorted the political system and debate was hindered by "too much power in too few hands". Harman also called for the introduction of a fit and proper person test to "cover impropriety and failures of good governance".
However, The Times' Friday leader questioned how far across the board the cap would stretch.
"Certainly, several media organisations would be affected by a 15 per cent cap," it read. "But there is one for which such an insistence upon plurality would be devastating. That is the BBC."
The leader went on to say that the BBC's own figures showed the broadcaster provided almost three quarters of all television news hours in the UK - which was "some way above the figure Ms Harman feels is acceptable" - and accounted for 47 per cent of all minutes of news consumed in the country every day, according to an Enders Research study.
The leader continued: "Obviously, it would be outrageous to suggest that she had deliberately chosen to omit the BBC from consideration, to conceal the fact that her motivation is not some nebulous desire for plurality at all, but an outright attempt to harm the fortunes of particular media organisations."
Last year, Labour proposed a limit of up 30 per cent ownership in the newspaper industry. A 15 per cent cap could cover the media as a whole, including "any medium of communication that stands between a creator of content and an audience".
News International covered 37 per cent of the newspaper market until the News of the World was binned amid the phone hacking scandal and allegations of illegal practices at the paper in order to obtain stories. Several former employees of the paper are awaiting trial over a serious of charges, including former editor Rebekah Brooks and former Tory spin doctor Andy Coulson.