Rupert Murdoch—‘a newspaper man’

Press, 7 January 1987, Page 25

Rupert Murdoch—‘a newspaper man’

In any terms, Rupert Murdoch must rank as one of the world’s most powerful newspaper men — if not the most powerful. Although his present attempt to take control of the Herald and Weekly Times group at Melbourne has run into problems, not least a recommended rival bid by Robert Holmes a Court, no-one believes that Murdoch has been ruled out. He does not work that way. MICHAEL DAVIE of the London “Observer** comments.

A prominent Australian politician was asked last week why he had had so little to say publicly about the newest revelation on the scale of Mr Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions.

Mr Murdoch has made a sAustl.B billion bid for Australia’s largest media group, the Herald and Weekly Times, which owns 143 newspapers of various sizes, television stations, newsprint mills, the main newspaper and magazine distributors, and a slice of the Australian press agency, the A.A.P., among other assets.

Counter-bids have been made, but if the deal — the biggest in Australia’s corporate history — goes through, the addition of H.W.T. to his existing interests will give Mr Murdoch a dominance over printed news, information, and opinion throughout Australia that has no parallel in any other democratic country.

Yet only a handful of politicians has objected. Mr Bill Hayden, the Foreign Minister, has called Mr Murdoch a “carpetbagging foreigner” (he became an American citizen to help his business) and said he should be stopped. Mr Hayden was easily overruled last week in the Federal Cabinet. Mr Malcolm Fraser, the former Prime Minister, shares Mr Hayden’s views, though since he lost his trousers under mysterious circumstances in Memphis recently, he has found it difficult to persuade his

fellow citizens to take him seriously. So the political leader was. being asked a good question. Were politicians lying low because they were too scared of Murdoch to speak out? “Yes.” Silence hung in the air. “You mean, you really are?” “Of course we are.”

H.W.T. is the rich maiden aunt of Australia. It is a public company with a wide spread of share ownership. In character, in recent years, it has been conservative and grey.

The company was built up by Rupert’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch. It is always said that when he died, in 1952, his son, then at Oxford, expected to inherit more than he did. He got one paper only, in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, and built his empire from there. He tried to buy H.W.T. seven years ago, but was beaten back. This time, his chance came after the Federal Labour Government, led by Mr Bob Hawke, announced its intention of changing the media ownership laws. Their broad effect will be to force proprietors to choose between print and television.

Now, there have been complaints for years past that Australia is dominated by only four media groups: H.W.T.; Murdoch; Mr Kerry Packer of World Series Cricket, magazines and television; and the Fairfax Group, still run after 150 years by the Fairfax family, and owners of the two best papers in Australia, the “Sydney Morning Herald” and the “Age” of Melbourne and of the “Spectator” in London. The Murdoch bid has special significance, because newspapers in Australia are a far more important source of news, criticism and information than they are in Britain. Australian tele-

vision is dominated by ratings battles and entertainment.

Having emasculated the never very virile A.8.C., Australia’s equivalent of the 8.8. C., the pair who now, at least in theory, run the country, Mr Hawke and his Treasurer, Mr Paul Keating, have turned their attention to the rest of the media.

It is generally reckoned that the intent of their new laws is to help Packer and Murdoch and to weaken, if not destroy, H.W.T. and Fairfax. More and more, Mr Hawke and Mr Keating are behaving like old-fashioned Tammany Hall politicians, scarcely bothering to conceal the bones of their system of government, Which is to reward friends and bash enemies. They evidently want Mr Packer to dominate television and Mr Murdoch to dominate print. That they should want to encourage Mr Packer is relatively easy to understand. The HawkeKeating power base lies in New South Wales, where the Labour Party plays it rough. Mr Packer’s private political opinions would not be far to the left of Ghengis Khan, but his television base is also in New South Wales, and, as Mr Hawke remarked candidly the other day: “It is always a pleasure to be on Channel Nine.”

But why should two Labour politicians help Murdoch, whose newspapers generally back the Right, and who is an American citizen to boot? After all, Mr Murdoch’s papers are considered to have contributed powerfully, by unscrupulous journalism, to the defeat of the Federal Labour Government in 1975, and of the South Australian Labour Government in 1979.

Part of the answer, I am told, is that Mr Hawke and Mr Keating harbour a barely rational* hatred of Fairfax and H.W.T.

Unlike Mr Packer, and Mr Murdoch, the Fairfax and H.W.T. bosses do not talk privately to the Government. Mr Murdoch

entertains Australian politicians to dinner, when they pass through New York. H.W.T. has always been critical of, though on the whole fair to, Labour, but has been particularly critical of some of its recent economic measures. Mr Keating, the Treasurer, does not like criticism. He calls his critics — and any reporter who fails to reflect' his opinions — “sleazebags” or “scumbags.” The Fairfax case is somewhat different. Its papers have generally supported the Government’s economic measures; but the group’s investigative reporters have of late been active in Sydney, the Hawke-Keating bailiwick, where there is plenty to investigate.

With Messrs Hawke and Keating in support of Mr Murdoch, the Labour State Premiers had been lying low, until at the end of last week the South Australian Labour Party stirred itself and, at a spirited meeting in Adelaide, wholly condemned the Murdoch bid.

If the bid succeeds, Adelaide will become a one-proprietor town, which will be, in the view of the nuclear physicist and former State Governor, Sir Mark Oliphant, "scandalous.” It is not surprising that South Australia should revolt. The acting state secretary of the Labour Party, Mr Colin McKee, the moderate who moved the antiMurdoch motion, told me that they had known Mr Murdoch for a long time, since he was here, running the Adelaide “News” for eight years. “The ‘News’ has always been vitriolic about Labour in this state,” he said. Its “blatant distortion of news” during the 1979 state election was

“an integral part of the collapse of the Labour Government” Afterwards, the Australian Press Council condemned the “News” election coverage. “The only result was that Murdoch removed his support from the Press Council,” said Mr McKee, accurately.

Mr Murdoch has made so many successful newspaper takeovers that his performance on these occasions has been perfected. As soon as the bid has gone through, or when he wishes to make people think that the battle is won, he holds a press conference. He is then photographed smiling, holding up a copy of the newspaper he has just swallowed.

The press conference is always dignified, since the reporters present who do not work for him already fear that they may soon do so. Mr Murdoch then announces that he will respect the editorial independence of the paper or papers he has just bought. Nobody believes him, but they don’t say so. Then Mr Murdoch says he will take the

paper up-market, pour in more resources,, etc.

In the present bid, after his press conference, he went on one of his own television stations to answer similarly respectful questions and his answers made the lead story next morning in his own papers.

There was only one hitch at the press conference. A nonMurdoch reporter asked what he thought of the remark made by Mike Royko, the respected Chicago columnist, after Murdoch bought the paper Royko worked on. Royko, as he resigned, to go to the opposition, said that no self-respecting dead fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch newspaper, let alone work for it.

Mr Murdoch replied that he thought nothing of Royko. In that case, the reporter asked, why had he fought a court battle to keep him? Mr Murdoch relies heavily on other people’s forgetfulness. Otherwise all was sweetness and light. His mother, Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, was at the press conference. "Congratulations, dear,” she said, before kissing her son for the cameras. .She was evidently delighted that her son had recaptured her husband’s old newspaper group. I asked a senior H.W.T. executive if he thought that sentiment had played any part in the Murdoch bid. “I very much doubt it,” he said grimly. Mr Andreas Whittam Smith, founder and editor of the “Independent” has been in Australia during the past few days, talking about independent newspapers. To many Australian journalists, it sounded as if he was talking about paradise. One Murdoch employee, fed up, recently resigned and went to work for the “South China Morning Post.” Then Murdoch bought that. “You can run, but you can’t hide,” said another journo. If the H.W.T. deal goes through, of the 800 journalist in Brisbane, only eight, according to the Brisbane Jour-

nalists’ Union, will not be working for Murdoch. In Adelaide, journalists on the "Advertiser,” the opposition paper, have been going around in Murdoch masks. “We have been fighting Murdoch longer than anyone else, and finally we have had to succumb.” They told a joke which is not a joke. Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Rupert. Rupert who? You’re fired. The tenth volume of the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, recently published, contains an entry about Sir Keith Murdoch written by a distinguished Melbourne historian, Geoffrey Furle. He quotes a former employee’s assessment of Sir Keith: "A calculating, undeviating, insatiable seeker after wordly riches and temporal power. But his detractors would usually admit that he was, after all, a newspaper man.” Furle himself concludes: “Like most newspaper tycoons, Mr Murdoch backed the conventional conservative stances of his day and lacked the originality to make any useful contributions to public policy; but he was ah able journalist, a brilliant editor In his youth, and a remarkable entrepreneur and organiser of his industry.” No wonder that Dame Elizabeth, at the triumphant (and conceivably premature) press conference, showed that she regards her son as a chip off the old block.

More news criticism

‘Scandulous’ Situation