THERE SAT RUPERT AND HIS SON JAMES: while behind them sat Wendi Deng, who became the unexpected focal point of the day’s events when an anarchist comedian (sic) rushed forward and tried to ram a plate of foam into Rupert’s face. While the whole of the committee room remained stunned and motionless, Mrs Murdoch leapt to her feet and launched herself at the “young” comedian, and prevented the plate of foam from reaching its intended target’s face.
Yet again, as they did in the recent demonstrations against government cuts, the young middle class radicals, represented on this occasion by one Jonnie Marbles, grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory.
This whole piece of theatre that the liberal Left had waited almost forty years to see come to fruition, was ruined by one of their own. This was meant to have been the day when the Left’s anti-Christ was to have had a stake put through his cruel heart.
Still, no doubt Channel IV will give the (I think the fashionable term is “edgy”) comedian a series once the law has finished with him.
It is interesting to observe that these young radicals are the gilded children of successful and wealthy parents, who, when arrested and found guilty, can find sympathy with certain journalists who think it extreme that they should receive a term of imprisonment, for what they regard as youthful indiscretions: but they would, no doubt, and quite rightly so, be averse to granting the same level of charity to the chav fraternity that disrupt the harmony of our town centres on a Friday night.
THE MURDOCHS, I THOUGHT, PERFORMED WELL; as did the markets. As the proceedings continued News International’s share price continued to recover some of the losses incurred by this whole episode.
But what not many observers have focused upon, is how Mrs Murdoch, sitting as she did behind her husband, kept poking him in the back whenever Rupert started to bang the table. This contribution, perhaps more so than her intervention against the bloke who lost his marbles, did far more good to her husband’s cause.
Yesterday had to be a day of contrition for the Murdoch family. Rupert’s volatility had to be suppressed and Wendi Deng once more served her husband’s interests well by her gentle prodding whenever he showed signs of his explosive nature.
No doubt it is because Mr Murdoch had to betray his true nature in the interests of his media empire, that he appeared at times doddering, and delaying his answers to the questions asked of him from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
What could have turned into a shouting match that would have been too News International’s disadvantage, became a contrite yet informative appearance, that, had the actions of an egotistical non-entity not intervened; no doubt a more serious light would have shone on the events in the Wilson Room.
As far as the wider public are concerned this whole business matters little. Before the Millie Dowler episode, the British public cared very little about the privacy of celebrities; especially as they were shown to thrive on publicity themselves; and if they were to go a day without it, they would panic at the possibility that their status had taken a tumble.
So the British public cared little for the privacy of celebrities. But when an ordinary family like Millie Dowler’s is subjected to the same horrors, then the British public seems, rightly, to draw a line: and the politicians whose cynical antennae are always working overtime for an opportunity - took it.
FROM THE MOMENT WHEN Millie Dowler became a victim of hacking, then politicians, competitors, and liberal opponents, including the BBC, knew they had a chance to get their man. Until an ordinary family were cruelly subjected to such a criminal act, the politicians, as well as Murdoch’s competitors, knew that the public cared little about phone hacking.
But with Millie Dowler, an opportunity that had taken over four decades to accomplish finally arrived; and it set the liberal hearts fluttering. The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee was ecstatic at the possibility of News Corporation’s bereavement.
News Corporation will survive, despite Polly sticking pins in an effigy of Rupert Murdock. Rupert Murdoch identified that, in this country in the eighties, the printing industry needed reformation. What he then did was to counter antiquated employment practices with modern technology. In so doing he had to lay off several thousands of printers at Wapping.
However, before those of you not born or are too young to understand what was going on at the time of the Wapping dispute in the 1980s, let me tell you.
Rupert Murdoch appreciated the advances in technology that were then on the market; he also understood that such computerised technology would undermine the melted lead approach to newspaper printing.
In Fleet Street at the time, the printing unions enjoyed what were then widely described as “Spanish practices” within the newspaper industry. This meant, for instance, that printers would clock in and go home; it meant that the aristorcratical practice of inheritance, applied to the families of employees in the printing industry, just as they applied, at the time, to the families of dock workers. This meant that the hereditary principle (much despised by the Left) had applied to both print workers and dockers; just as it applied to the much despised Royal Family.
Fleet Street needed shaking up and Rupert Murdoch led the charge and has never been forgiven since. But rather than living up to the Right-wing despot painted of him by the Left, Murdoch is above all a business man seeking out profit for both himself and his shareholders. It matters little to him whether his newspapers belong to the Right or Left, for each of them represent a targeted constituency that will bring him profit.
Rupert Murdoch may be a son of the Right; but he is above all else a business man, and as such is immune from such categorisation. For is the loss-making Times or Sunday Times Right-wing? Murdoch’s shareholders would not allow him to organise News International in such a bias fashion. Share holders look toward their dividends. They would not look favourably upon a CEO of a company that sought, for purely ideological reasons, to bend his whole empire to any kind of dogmatic will. Profit and profit alone is the raison d’être of any entrepreneur including Rupert Murdoch.
THE MURDOCH’S have supplicated themselves before this committee as they will have to do before the numerous other committees of enquiry, whether in this country or America and Australia. Whether, during these confrontations Wendi Deng will be able to protect her husband as she did yesterday only time will tell.
News International under Murdoch’s tutelage has become a successful international corporation. Murdoch has had to rely upon the market place for his achievements. He has had to use the market place rather than pick the pockets of the tax payer for much of his income; unlike the BBC, who are celebrating what they hope will be this great man’s departure.
Rupert Murdoch bared a well justified grudge against this country. As when, in an emotional interlude to his evidence; he referred to his journalist father who wrote exposing the stupidity of the British adventure on the shore of Gallipoli during the First World War.
Following his father’s expose, the British establishment (after all it was Churchill who thought the whole episode of Gallipoli up) turned on the Rupert’s father and left Rupert himself with a grudge against the British establishment. A grudge, I feel sure, I for one, would have shared given such a circumstance.
It was the standard of journalism shown by his father that Rupert felt the News of the World had betrayed by hacking into the lives of people like Millie Dowler; and it was this betrayal that led to his decision to close the News of the World.
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