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Canberra Today 17°/20° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

It’s time Rupert crashed

Rupert Murdoch.
THE mind is a precision instrument of self-delusion. And this was nowhere better illustrated than in the testimony given by Rupert Murdoch to the Leveson Inquiry into the British press.

It is almost impossible to credit that Murdoch actually believes what he told the inquiry, yet he had a completely straight face in this exchange:

Counsel assisting (Mr Jay): What about the Australian Press Council upholding allegations of bias by Murdoch papers in their political reporting [in 1975]? Was that at least factually right?

A. No.

Q. And of you openly pushing your commercial interests by using your newspaper powers; is that right?

A. No. I take a particularly strong pride in the fact that we have never pushed our commercial interests in our newspapers.

Truly, the mind boggles. The press council did so find. And the evidence is overwhelming that the Murdoch press has assiduously peddled their influence with politicians the world over to gain business advantage. Indeed, I was present when the young Murdoch courted my then boss, Deputy PM and Minister for Trade and Industry John McEwen, to change the rules to allow him to buy the “News of the World”. And the pattern has continued and grown to the point where they were enlisting British politicians to back their multi-billion pound acquisition of BSkyB.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The newspapers and other media are an instrument of their wider commercial interests.

Those of us who care about the ethics and traditions of the press are torn between rage and despair. Good men and women over the centuries have suffered and died in the cause of “freedom of the press”. So it is heart-breaking to see the way Murdoch, with his disgusting scandal sheets, has distorted it to his own commercial ends. Worse, he is using it now as a shield against those who are responding to his excesses by suggesting some form of regulation.

But does he realise what he’s doing, or has the mind’s power of self-delusion won out? I suspect that part of him, in the quiet of the night, recognises the truth. Just as I believed that Richard Nixon knew deep down that he was running a criminal enterprise from the White House. Indeed, the parallels with Nixon’s downfall over Watergate are quite startling. They range from the broad issues – the relatively minor crime exploding into a massive cover-up – to the minutiae of each man’s principal offsider (Bob Haldeman and James Murdoch) softening his hairstyle when called to give evidence.

But essentially it’s the man at the top who set the tone of his organisation, which encouraged – even compelled – it to run out of control.

Nixon crashed and burned. Will Murdoch do the same? We should all hope so. Because at stake is that “freedom of the press” that we all hold so dear. He cannot be allowed to destroy it from within.

robert@robertmacklin.com

 

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Robert Macklin

Robert Macklin

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