In a few weeks’ time, the business secretary Vince Cable will make a decision that could change the nature of the British press forever. The Australian media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, whose business empire News International spans four continents, has made a bid worth £8 billion to take over the satellite TV network Sky. Murdoch’s dominion currently includes the US television network Fox, publishing house Harper Collins and several newspapers globally; in the UK alone he owns The Times, The Sun and The News of the World.

Whilst Murdoch’s organisation now possesses 39.1% of BSkyB, the takeover would see him buy out the remaining 61% to have full control over the business, which has a reported worth of five billion pounds. The combined annual revenues of his UK operations would then rise to £6.4 billion, twice that of the BBC’s annual budget. This would mean, effectively, that Murdoch would have control over a media monopoly that influences a huge percentage of the population.

The newspapers he controls are estimated to reach a 40% combined readership by 2014; the viewership of Sky is estimated to be nearly 50% of the television market by that time.

The UK press has a long and distinguished history of independence and freedom; the Profumo affair, cash-for-questions, Jeffrey Archer’s downfall, cash-for-honours and the Expenses scandal – all stories broken by UK newspaper, through unbiased, fearless investigative journalism. In contrast, Murdoch is known to call the editors of those papers he owns almost on a daily basis – which hardly implies a laissez-faire approach to the editorial line.

News International have to report the deal to EU regulators, but once this is passed, the business secretary will have ten days to veto the takeover on grounds of public interest. Has there ever been a more obvious case for intervention? In the past two weeks, the British press have united against the move – the BBC, Channel 4, and papers including The Telegraph, the Guardian, The Mirror and The Daily Mail all put aside their well-known political allegiances to sign a letter to Cable arguing against Murdoch’s planned expansion. The cynic inside you might surmise that such a ragtag band of hacks are merely joining up to protect their profits, but the scenario that would result from such a huge inflation of News International is much more dystopian.

Currently Sky enjoys relative autonomy from Murdoch’s controlling gaze; it’s won awards for its balanced, hard-hitting news coverage. If it were to be tainted by News International’s imperial seal, its journalistic integrity and neutrality would be shattered. The BBC would have half the budget to compete with Sky – a budget has just had its income, the license fee, frozen for three years and that is in danger of further cuts from a Murdoch-friendly Conservative government; the Tories were endorsed from the start of the election campaign by the Murdoch press.

News Corp has said that the move is “essentially financial”, yet this overt move is both nefarious and characteristic of the coldly capitalistic nature of Murdoch’s intentions.

In short, our media would be involuntarily reduced to a duopoly, a two-horse race in which one horse is twice as fast as the other. Media plurality in the UK would be shattered, heralding a new era of Americanised, brazenly biased political coverage, like that seen on Fox. If Cable bows to the pressure of his Tory cronies, he’ll pass by the only chance to save the integrity and freedom of the UK media.

As George Orwell once said, “the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords”.