I have written a piece for the Weekend FT on Rupert Murdoch:
It is a long way from Sun Valley to the Street of Shame.
That was the implausible excuse used by Rupert Murdoch when, on Thursday, in an interview at a media conference he was attending in Idaho, he was asked by his own Fox Business cable channel about the burgeoning scandal involving phone tapping and invasion of privacy by the News of the World in London.
“I’m not talking about that issue at all today … I’m far too removed around here,” he replied. Stuart Varney, the Fox Business anchor, obediently caved in to his boss. “OK, no worries, Mr Chairman, that’s fine with me,” he grovelled.
Mr Varney might have recalled the evidence given to a House of Commons committee by Les Hinton, the former chairman of News International in London and now publisher of The Wall Street Journal, about journalists: “Their job, most of the time, is to find out information that other people do not want them to find out.”
Yet, figuratively, Mr Murdoch was correct. The role he occupies today, as owner of the Journal, the Times of London and scores of media businesses around the world, is indeed far removed from 40 years ago, when he won a battle with the late Robert Maxwell to acquire the News of the World, a notorious scandal sheet.
That took him, as a thrusting 37-year-old newspaper owner, out of Australia to the bigger stage of Fleet Street. It also made his reputation as a brash, ruthless publisher with a tabloid sensibility and rightwing views.
At 78, he may or may not have mellowed – the cold glint behind his sunglasses when faced with Mr Varney’s question suggested not – but his reputation certainly has.
You can read the rest here and comment below.
