Spell, interrupted

The furore over the machinations of News of the World in the Murdoch stable exposes the risks to a free press in the fountain head of democracy and highlights the vulnerability of media to the new technological age we live in. Britain has been proverbially notorious for its taste in lurid journalism even while renowned for what are called quality broadsheets. What is harder to explain is how one person was able to own a string of newspapers ranging from tabloids known for page-three topless women and salacious stories to such a venerable newspaper as the Times. And until now he was on the way fully to control the highly profitable BSkyB satellite channel, a deal he has had to call off.
What is even more astonishing is that the monopoly of newspapers and part ownership of the BSkyB channel made him a virtual arbiter of making and breaking governments. No wonder a string of hoary British politicians ranging from Tony Blair to David Cameron and an army of others courted Rupert Murdoch, who was not shy in boasting his power to tilt the balance in favour or against potential Prime Ministers. And once his favoured Prime Minister took office, he loudly proclaimed his role.
As British Prime Minister David Cameron belatedly acknowledged, no politician was immune from courting Mr Murdoch. In plain language, British politicians were pulverised by the fear that Mr Murdoch had it in his power to destroy their political careers. With public anger mounting over the serial hacking of cellphones of murdered victims, the royals, police officials and even killed British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, an inquiry has now been ordered, which will also seek answers to how to foster a free and clean media.
The methods of collecting news regardless of the means employed, including the bribing of police officials, and how widespread the practice was are subjects for inquiry. But given the scale of the operations, a thorough house-cleaning seems to be in order. Mr Murdoch was a maverick publisher who dared and won. He took on the Fleet Street labour unions and humbled them. And his ruthlessness in beating competition was a byword in newspaper lore. How he traded on his initial success on Fleet Street to replicate the model in the United States going to the extent of becoming an American citizen to own media assets is an epic story. Mr Murdoch has been seeking to redefine the Fourth Estate.
Overall, the Murdoch saga in Britain presents a sorry picture. How could Britain lose its way, as it so obviously has? There was handwringing before ceding the Times to Mr Murdoch, as there was in the United States in the case of the Wall Street Journal, and Mr Murdoch invented the highly profitable Fox News channel as an extreme form of campaign journalism. Perhaps the end of Great Britain’s empire affected its self-esteem and confidence so greatly that it was prepared to surrender to any daring adventurer with the money and gumption to stake a claim to the country’s traditional riches.
The twist in the tale of the Murdoch saga has an object lesson for the world that believes in a free media. First, governments must reinforce anti-monopoly mechanisms to prevent one person or organisation cornering the media market, thus acquiring the kind of political power Mr Murdoch has exercised over the British political system. This particularly applies to the simultaneous ownership of print and electronic media. An effective supervisory provision to ensure fair play has been missing.
Mr Cameron has many crosses to bear. He had employed Andy Coulson, a former editor of News of the World, as his communication chief and although he has been suitably contrite in taking his share of the blame, it was a gross error of judgement in employing him. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has been particularly vocal in decrying Murdoch’s practices. One danger, of course, is that under the guise of seeking to keep media on the straight and narrow the authorities would assume powers that could curb freedom of expression. That applies more to emerging economies than established democracies. But the manner in which Mr Murdoch conducted himself is an object lesson in how the mother of Parliaments can be kept at bay.
Modern technology is here to stay and cannot be disinvented. Rather, the cure lies in the hoary adage of eternal vigilance being the price of liberty. In Britain’s case, the two major parties did not do their duty in guarding against the evil of monopoly control. And once Mr Murdoch had pretty nearly cornered the press from the tabloids to the traditional quality paper and partly owned a successful satellite channel, he had acquired too much clout to be tamed by politicians seeking to stay out of his way for fear of being vilified, with party leaders feting him in 10 Downing Street.
It needed the shock of a newspaper hacking the cellphone of a murdered girl and later discoveries of how Scotland Yard papered over earlier investigations because the investigating officers had been compromised to bring out the full horrors of a culture of sycophancy and a media group that stopped at nothing to have its way. This is without doubt the greatest setback to the meteoric rise of perhaps the most successful media buccaneer of modern times. He has had to close down News of the World to cut his losses and has for the moment lost his bid to control all of BSkyB, apart from losing his British chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. What is worse from Mr Murdoch’s point of view is that his magic spell has been broken. A second looming tragedy is across the Atlantic because some American politicians are beginning to question his practices and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation. With Fox News, Murdoch has set a new idiom in broadcast journalism by aggressively slanting news to promote a political cause. In a sense, he has been a godfather of the Tea Party movement.

The author can be contacted at snihalsingh@gmail.com