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attract readers. Journalists on the two opposing newspapers would think nothing of engaging in dirty tricks to beat their rival. It was real Front Page stuff. Not pretty, but effective.
Reporters would impersonate doctors or policemen in pursuit of an exclusive. There was an outcry after a photographer donned a doctor’s coat and snatched a photograph of Mick Jagger’s former girlfriend Marianne Faithfull. She had taken a drug overdose and been rushed to the intensive care unit of St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney. Despite the unlawful means used, the Sunday Mirror splashed on the story with the headline: SCOOP! MARIANNE IN A COMA. It showed the singer lying in bed with tubes stuck in her mouth and a caption which read, ‘First exclusive picture of Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, as she lies in hospital fighting for life after an overdose of drugs.’ Although the Australian Journalists Association condemned the tactics used, newspapers in Australia and in Britain were happy to publish the dramatic photograph. Sydney provided an excellent training ground for Fleet Street.
Ron Boland, Murdoch’s right-hand man in Adelaide, offered me a job with the Adelaide News and its sister paper the Sunday Mail in 1968. I spent some weeks putting together a campaigning story about the large number of fatalities discovered among workers inhaling asbestos dust. Extensive research on the subject had been made available to me by Adelaide University, which had investigated different kinds of cancers arising from exposure to asbestos dust. Despite pleas from the features editor, Ron Boland refused to print the story to avoid offending major advertisers. Suppression of that kind would not happen to me again. Once I had arrived in Fleet Street, I found that refusal to publish by one newspaper group normally opened opportunities with another.
I joined the Melbourne Sun, part of the Herald and Weekly Times group once led by Rupert’s father Sir Keith Murdoch and whose ethos was markedly different to the brash culture of his son’s News Limited. Journalists were treated with civility and pay and conditions were a considerable improvement although one missed the go-getting excitement that existed at News Limited. But that was soon to return when I arrived penniless in London in January 1970, having just spent five glorious months on a mountain between Malaga and Ronda in Spain where I wrote my still-unfinished play and drank wine delivered in large casks strapped to the back of a donkey. But reality soon set in and the Press Association in Fleet Street beckoned. Impressed by my knowledge of law (from the results of a written test given to employees) editor-in-chief Sir David Chipp personally welcomed me to the organisation. But David held far greater expectations of me than I did for the pace of life at the PA with the result that I left some six months later and joined a notorious press agency run by a Fagin character who looked as if he had just emerged from a Charles Dickens novel. Tommy Bryant was outrageous and compelling with an unlimited supply of chutzpah.
Tommy’s Fleet Street News Agency was suitably based in subterranean premises in Red Lion Court off Fleet Street. Tommy (whose catchphrase was, ‘Jesus Christ, why aren’t you earning me money?’) hired young freelance journalists keen to break into Fleet Street. Several of his protégés were to become London editors and first class executives. He supplied stories to every newspaper and kept his wife pregnant most of the time to inhibit her passion for shopping.
Tommy was a master at ‘buying’ crime stories and had acquired a series of tipsters, most of them police officers, who he would regularly suborn with the promise of £5 for each publishable tip received. He was not the only one doing so. A former Labour MP and cabinet minister Shirley Williams recently made light of the fact on television that when as a young reporter she worked for the Daily Mirror police were regularly given a fiver for their assistance. But that was small beer compared to police on the make in the 1970s. They were paid thousands, stashed in brown envelopes and left on the bar of an Old Compton Street pub in Soho where pornographers and police exchanged pleasantries on a Friday evening.
Although it was against press council policy, Tommy would not hesitate to break rules or ethics when it came to getting a story. The press council had ruled that newspapers should not pay convicted criminals for their stories unless in exceptional circumstances. Tommy had no inhibitions. He promised criminals the world for their stories and promptly reneged on the deal once it was published. His police contacts in the City of London gave him adequate protection against disillusioned and unhappy criminals.
Across the way from Tommy’s den in Red Lion Court were the offices of News Limited of Australia, home of Murdoch’s London correspondents. One of his long-serving London editors, Peter Gladwin, had been given a seat on the board of directors of the newly acquired News of the World. Peter said he’d alerted Murdoch to rumours that Robert Maxwell had put in a bid for the newspaper but was modest about his role. ‘I was made a director simply to agree with whatever Rupert wanted.’
Apart from the Press Association and Fagin, the doors to the major newspapers were difficult to batter down for a young reporter from Australia. Fleet Street was a mecca for talented and clever journalists who could drink to excess and yet turn in superb prose. Battering rams were not the answer. The big money and recognition would come from acquiring exclusives and that is how I came to be offered considerable incentive from the News of the World to give it first refusal on my stories. I began chasing big stories, which at that time sold for small fortunes. It was at the height of relentless competition between the Sunday and daily newspapers in London, much of it generated by Murdoch’s acquisition of the News of the World and the Sun. On two different occasions, I had front-page splashes in all three of the Sunday populars on the same day. Editors began taking notice of this and within two years of arriving broke in London, I had acquired an Aston Martin DB5, two substantial properties, and the use of an office on the second floor of Bouverie Street, London EC4.
The combined circulation of the three Sunday newspapers – News of the World, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – exceeded 10 million and the total readership was in the region of 30 million. It was an exciting change from the smaller newspapers on which I had worked in Australia, although the culture within the Murdoch camp was much the same in both countries. While the NoW provided ready cash, enabling Murdoch to quickly expand his empire, it was the Sun in which he showed most interest. He had bought a failing, left-wing newspaper and turned it into a huge money-spinner, eventually beating its main competitor the Daily Mirror. Murdoch had recognised the Mirror’s mistake in trying to be too upmarket while catering mainly to a blue-collar audience and made sure the Sun would have no such pretensions. His paper was working class but pandered to entrenched, right-wing opinions. It was bigoted, brash, angry about immigration, critical of homosexuals and interested in sex, sensation, and money. The Mirror would never again catch up with the Sun’s simple but effective formula. Much of its early success was due to the genius of advertising whizz kid Graham King who had proved his worth with Channel 9 TV in Adelaide and the Daily Mirror in Sydney. King’s golden touch would later increase sales of the Sunday Times and Murdoch’s Star magazine in America.
Murdoch paid his executives well. For the journalist or editor who could produce the results Murdoch demanded, there would be ample riches. For those who failed, early dismissal was on the cards. This approach ensured an editor would adapt the same hardnosed approach as the proprietor to avoid the risk of being moved sideways or sacked. Murdoch allowed no slack. His treatment of staff was rarely based on sentiment or emotion. Generally, the fate of an employee would be determined only by business considerations, although there have been some significant exceptions.
Rupert Murdoch’s approach to politics and politicians has been along similar lines. A politician who might be sympathetic to his organisation would be given a good press while otherwise he or she would be regarded as an enemy. And a prime minister’s term in office was finite while Rupert Murdoch was there for life. So it was they who usually sought favour with the press mogul and not the other way around. In fact, Murdoch bluntly told politicians questioning him about his friendship with politicians and access to prime ministers, ‘I wish they’d leave me alone.’ But neither side could leave the other alone for too long. When it helped his business, Murdoch could be at ease with either political party or, if necessary, support a dictatorship. His minions would also show deft footwork in nurturing friendships with people in power.
Politicians, police and public