The Rise and Fall of the Murdoch Empire. John Lisners
they understand their boundaries. To limit that freedom in any way is tantamount to state censorship and that is unacceptable in a genuine democracy. The range of voices that are able to speak in the UK has been entrenched in the national psyche and must be preserved at all costs. The extent to which those boundaries have been compromised – and there is little doubt that they have been – is now the subject of a major investigation that will impact heavily on future relationships with the press. Journalism can be entertaining and enjoyable and hugely satisfying. Competition is healthy and there are already laws in place to prevent criminality. All that is needed is enforcement. The press should not be gagged.
Proprietors would do well to remind themselves of Kingsley Amis’s comment in the New Statesman in 1932. He wrote: ‘Every newspaper lives by appealing to a particular public. It can only go ahead of its times if it carries its public with it. Success in journalism depends on understanding the public. But success is of two kinds. [Daily Mail founder Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount] Northcliffe had a genius for understanding his public and he used it for making money, not for winning permanent influence. He became a millionaire because he was his own most appreciative reader; he instinctively appealed in the most profitable way to the millions of men and women whose tastes and prejudices were the same as his own. He lived by flattering. He did not educate or change his public in any essential; he merely induced it to buy newspapers.’
New York, Friday, 11 March 2011. Rupert Murdoch’s 80th birthday. Breaking news carried reports of a major disaster. Japan’s most powerful earthquake ever recorded had struck the country’s north-east coast, triggering a massive tsunami destroying everything in its path. More than 20,000 people were dead or missing and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was in meltdown.
A cataclysmic event of this magnitude was a heady reminder to take stock of one’s own situation. For Murdoch, it was an unwelcome portent of dangerous times ahead, just as he was planning a multi-billion takeover in Britain and putting finishing touches to dynastic strategies for the Murdoch family. The last thing he needed was a tsunami affecting his own empire.
News Corporation dominated the world, as the largest and most successful multimedia organisation. It owns the most prestigious newspapers and magazines on three continents. Its TV stations and satellite broadcasters reach nearly every nation on Earth. Among its subsidiaries are film companies, movie studios and book publishers. Its tentacles are legion. Rupert Murdoch, a visionary and business genius, had laid the foundations of his empire in Adelaide, Australia, more than 50 years ago and is now one of the most powerful men on the planet. He is widely admired as a corporate giant, yet has many detractors who have condemned his tabloid newspapers and the influence he wields among politicians worldwide. Left-of-centre politicians have been particularly scathing of his modus operandi and neo-conservative leanings.
Murdoch created a unique culture within News Corporation and its international subsidiaries. The prime objective for his executives has been to embrace the corporation’s ambitious drive for success. Murdoch’s DNA is shared by a large number of executives among his 52,000-strong global work force. To succeed, they have to follow the corporation’s aim of beating the competition at all costs. Colleagues must be part of the cult of the ‘Mini-Me’, a cloned version of Rupert Murdoch. For their dedication, staff receive generous salaries but the corporation’s political philosophies and morality have always been dictated by need. And the major needs have been growth and capital. Bedtime reading for the boss is the bottom line of the company’s income statement.
In the UK, News International is the most powerful media group bar none. It is the largest single shareholder in British Sky Broadcasting and its subsidiaries include the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, and until its dramatic closure in July 2011, the News of the World. The Sun on Sunday has now replaced its toxic predecessor to take up the slack that left News International presses idle for more than seven months. Annual profits from BSkyB alone have topped £1 billion and it wasn’t until the phone hacking scandal broke big in the summer of 2011 that Murdoch dropped his bid for all of its shares. The family had wanted full control of this satellite goldmine. With all six of his children by three different wives already on their way to becoming billionaires, adding BSkyB to their portfolio would have assured their fabulous status quo in perpetuity.
But the cracks in the Murdoch empire had begun to show as early as 2000. Eventually they would open wide enough to form a devastating condemnation of News International and threaten the foundations of its far-reaching empire. Murdoch’s own tsunami was dangerously imminent.
When Murdoch won his battle for the News of the World in 1968, few people were aware of the true nature of the man. To many, the young Australian millionaire appeared to be a rank outsider. A gambler looked upon as unsophisticated and brash, showing little respect for the establishment or British royalty and without pretensions or social aspirations. But social climbing was hardly an issue. Murdoch had been born into privilege. He stood to inherit wealth, influence, and a first class pedigree among the Australian elite. When Murdoch eventually appeared before parliament at Westminster in July 2011, he stated that his father was not a wealthy man. By comparison to his own wealth, now counted in billions, there was some truth in that. But his father was far from average either in terms of wealth, social standing or political influence.
Sir Keith Murdoch had been head of the Melbourne Herald Group of newspapers and owned the Adelaide News (inherited by Rupert on his father’s death) and the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Murdoch’s mother Elisabeth was a Dame, having been honoured by the Queen for her charity work. The family lived in the wealthy Melbourne suburb of Toorak and owned a country estate, Cruden, and famous works of art. Sir Keith had himself been able to wield considerable political influence with Australian politicians, including prime ministers who had provided introductions to political leaders and newspaper magnates in England and America.
Young Rupert was sent to Geelong Grammar, an independent school whose alumni included Prince Charles, the King of Malaysia and John Gorton, a former Australian prime minister. He completed his education at Oxford. But the steely resolve Murdoch possessed was inspired by an admirable quality possessed by many down to earth Aussies – an egalitarian and courageous spirit which refused to be held back by social convention or conservatism. Murdoch was born with bags of this spirit. Despite his background, or perhaps because of it, he cared little about the class system in Britain and even less for the royal family. But that lack of interest in itself would be a contradiction. The royal family in Britain is one of the most successful dynasties ever created and the hereditary principle is one that Murdoch has perpetuated with his own family.
How ironic then that the British newspaper which had bankrolled his global buying spree and the royal family would both figure so highly in the first visible cracks of his empire. The royals had been an important source of revenue for his newspapers. Readers showed interest in every aspect of their lives and royal reporters were among the most highly paid journalists in Fleet Street. Competition for exclusive stories involving even minor royalty has been fierce, no matter how mundane the member and while their expense accounts were enviable, royal reporters were under continual pressure to produce the goods.
Clive Goodman had been the News of the World’s royal reporter for some years when he was asked to write the newspaper’s Blackadder column, previously edited by former royal spin doctor Mark Bolland. Goodman had broken a host of exclusives but could not afford to rest on his laurels. It is axiomatic among newspapers that a journalist is only as good as his or her last story and Andy Coulson, then editor of the NoW, was singularly unimpressed with past glories.
In 2005, Goodman wrote two totally bland stories about Britain’s Crown Prince William. On 6 November he reported the prince pulling a tendon in his knee and seeing his doctor. The second, published a week later, was even more trivial. It was about Prince William borrowing a television station’s editing suite from a journalist friend, Tom Bradby, who would help