Will the real Rupert Murdoch please stand
up? No, not the charming, visionary, dynamic
Mr M (as portrayed in William Shawcross's
ultra-benign biography), nor the shadowy,
scabrous, BBC-destroying Rupert (as here
conjured from the vast depths by Bruce
Page). Can we please have the Rupert who
commands loyalty as well as fear, admiration
as well as loathing? Let's call him Murdoch
at 72, Murdoch on his third marriage and
second family, Murdoch 2003 with a prostate
condition and a sperm bank, Murdoch of "The
Simpsons". "He's not the Rupert we used to
know," says his cut-price guru, Irwin
Stelzer. So who, pray, is he?
Page isn't a great help on some of these
questions. He's interesting when digging up
Australian roots and - as befits a former
opening batsman for the Insight team -
pretty good oil financial chicanery. But the
main feat of this mix of memoir, media
philosophizing and panegyric to the great
days of the Sunday Times is to put Murdoch
back where he doesn't always care to be: the
"gorilla" of Greg; Dyke's imaginings,
performing centre stage.
How does the old boy keep getting away with
it? Page can't quite understand. Rupert
wasn't much of a journalist, more a
second-rate sub-editor. (Page doesn't think
much of subs, though on this evidence he
needs them dearly.) His Murdoch comes
ideology lite and intellect denuded. He's a
baleful blight on honest reporting and -
worse than Harmsworth or Beaverbrook - a
relentless featherer of his own corporate
nest. Politicians fawn on him and fear him
unless he fears them, in which case he does
the fawning. He accretes and manipulates for
a fast, furious living.
The facile answer is that he's too big now
to fall on his face. News Corp is an
amorphous mystery, a foreign company in the
US, the Fox voice of America elsewhere. The
boss can destroy those who get in his way.
His tabloids win elections; his broadsheets
grease the slipways of power. Murdoch the
Untouchable lives forever. But he won't, of
course. And then Lachlan and the rest will
have to do what Daddy did at the start: live
on their nerves and their wits.
Time and again here, Rupert stakes the pot -
on the News of the World, the Sun, the
Times, Wapping, Sky and Fox - and time
and again he wins. Dirty work behind the
arras with Thatcher and Reagan? Sure. But
Most of the time his eye for the main chance
and his nerve matter more. You may hate him
if you wish; you underestimate him - as Page
tends to do - at your peril.
Take political beliefs. "Freedom for him was
one shaft, and he was its spearhead; the
causes of totalitarianism destroyed, of
unregulated, largely tabloid television, of
union-free workplaces and innovative finance
were not divisible." Add a bit of "Western
chest-drumming" and scorn for establishment
dodos, call the stew "libertarianism" - and
scoff away to your heart's content. This is
crude and callow, the natural philosophy of
the mail who invented the tabloid Sun
and staffed it with 'drunks and wannabes'.
Bruce sniffs a lot like this.
But where are the romantic gestures? The
doomed attempt, for instance, to rescue
Today. Are the loss-making Times
and New York Post merely political
calling cards, "pseudo papers" to set beside
Harry Evans's Sunday Times?
Why on earth bore your readers stupid
banging on about the evils of
Euro-federalism when the corrupt heart of
Brussels can be subverted more efficiently
by a few favours and phone calls? Why hang
onto a jaded variant of the special
relationship, which makes no sense to
globalized News Corp?
This new Mark Two Murdoch has form as well
as ambition. To be sure, "he doesn't like
backing losers", as Woodrow Wyatt once
complained. He ditched Major (just as, one
day, he will ditch the loser Blair). He'll
intervene to hose down his papers if they
turn over the wrong stones. But there's a
legacy to protect now, a philosophy, which
stretches beyond cynicism.
In this new world, other giant corporations
can be just as cuddly with government as
News Corp, Richard Desmond is almost as
welcome at Number 10 as Murdoch and celeb
mags from Emap make the Sun look
tame. Anyone can play. But the true question
is whether they can play like Rupert - for
he was, and still is, the difference.
Dawn/Observer News Service
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