Greens leader Bob Brown has called for an independent media watchdog in Australia following revelations that journalists from Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid, News of the World, had been hacking the phone calls of celebrities and others, including the phone of a teenage murder victim during a police investigation.
Senator Brown’s call for an inquiry sent a flurry through Australia’s media circles, but received a mixed reception from politicians, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying she is prepared to discuss the need for a media inquiry and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott rejecting the idea.
Australian-born Rupert Murdoch, 80, has a large stake in the Australian media with News Limited, a subsidiary of the New York-based News Corp, owning around 150 newspapers locally, including major metropolitan dailies and community newspaper groups in most capital cities.
While Senator Brown, who has dubbed the Murdoch Press “hate media”, has been joined by Labor Senator Stephen Conroy and former Prime Minister Paul Keating in descrying News Ltd for biased reporting, there has been little evidence yet in Australia of the underhanded behaviour seen in the News of the World scandal.
Reputation Damaged
This, however, will do little to assuage the Murdoch camp. A week ago, it was impossible to believe the international media magnate, who could call world leaders on a whim, would fall so rapidly from grace.
With eight of Rupert Murdoch’s staff at News of the World arrested in the UK and plenty more information to surface, Dr Joseph Fernandez, Head of the Journalism Department at Curtin University, says Mr Murdoch’s standing internationally has been severely damaged.
“It is really quite a dramatic time. It will take a very, very long time for any repair to come about. It is even possible that the legacy he leaves behind, however impressive it is, can’t help but be tainted by what has just happened,” he told The Epoch Times.
How much damage the scandal will do to Rupert Murdoch remains to be seen. Some have suggested that it will be board member and Rupert’s youngest son James Murdoch who will take the ultimate rap.
James, 38, is chairman of the company’s British TV operations BSkyB and in 2007 became head of News Corp’s European and Asian operations. Now he could face criminal charges after acknowledging that he had approved finances for out of court settlements to hacking victims.
US security agencies have started their own investigations, with the FBI admitting that they are investigating reports that News of the World journalists hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is likely to check whether News Corp paid off British police officials.
Under American law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it illegal for US companies to pay bribes to foreign government officials.
Continued on the next page ... Murdoch’s Watergate
The Rise of News Corp
Rupert Murdoch founded News Limited in Australia at the age of 22 after inheriting a Victorian based media organisation from his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, who passed away in 1953 while Rupert was studying at Oxford university.
He began to buy up newspapers in Australia before expanding into the United Kingdom, the US and the Asia Pacific.
Biographer William Shawcross, author of Murdoch: The Making of a Media Empire credits Rupert Murdoch with saving British newspapers from a certain end after taking on the UK printers unions and winning.
While newspapers have always been his passion, Mr Murdoch also defied doubters taking on the television networks, not only in Britain but also the United States.
When he set up his satellite television network Sky in the UK no one expected him to succeed let alone to merge with rival British Satellite Broadcasting creating today’s highly successful BskyB. And when he followed that with plans to establish a cable and satellite television network critics said a fourth network to the established NBC, ABC and CBS would never survive. Fox News is now regularly the highest rating television channel in the US.
Listed more than once in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, and regularly ranked in both the annual wealthiest and most powerful persons in the world lists of Forbes magazine, he has been commended for his skill as a business man and his passion for the media, particularly newspapers.
Murdoch’s Watergate
Speaking on Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, Mr Bernstein gave credit to Murdoch where it was due but was scathing about Murdoch’s contribution to journalism and international media.
“He has the Fox News network which is an institution of tremendous importance and political significance,” Mr Bernstein said, adding, “I think it is, too, damaged by showing that Murdoch’s journalism is not about good journalism, which is the best obtainable version of truth; it is about manufactured controversy; it is about gossip; it is about sensationalism; it’s about ideologically driven reporting.”
Mr Bernstein said that although the hacking trail may not directly lead to Mr Murdoch, like Richard Nixon and Watergate, the media mogul was responsible for the culture at News of the World, which he described as “Murdoch culture at its most extreme.”
As more information is revealed about the extent of that culture at News International, many of Rupert Murdoch’s other institutions will be affected in some way, Mr Bernstein said.
“His influence is undercut irrevocably. As a result of this, he is never going to preside over an institution with the same kind of influence that existed several weeks ago,” he said.
Reports are already surfacing that some directors on the News Corp board had expressed concerns about the continuing roles of not only James Murdoch, but Rupert himself.
According to Bloomberg, nine of the 16 board members are considered to be independent of Murdoch loyalties and of those, are number have been hinting at a regime change.
It will be the first time in 58 years that Murdoch’s position as CEO of News Corporation has been seriously threatened by the board’s independent directors says Australian shareholder activist Stephen Mayne at Crikey.com.
