RUPERT MURDOCH - Biography

Rupert Murdoch is the man who rules a large part of the airwaves from the northern to the southern hemisphere. To say that he's no ordinary man is an understatement. This modern-day Press baron is living out his dreams and what dreams they are. Murdoch, probably the last of the Press barons. They don't make them like they used to.




HE'S a man you would love to hate. His name elicits either profuse praise
or a diarrhoea of expletives. In the twilight years of the 20th Century,
Rupert Murdoch has clearly stamped his mark on this puny planet.
William Shawcross, who carved his name on journalism's hall of fame in
1979 with his Pulitzer nomination, Sideshow, brings to the fore the many
hidden faces of Murdoch.
Shawcross once pandered his literary skills for England's The Sunday
Times and the New Statesman. It would take a man of his experience to give
an accurate and fair assessment of the media mogul who has unwittingly
made a career of irritating tycoons and heads of State in his
international adventures.
It's hard to exaggerate the influence exacted on this globe by Murdoch,
an export from Down Under. His electronic acquisitions now beam
information and entertainment programmes all over Asia and the Middle
East. He touches the minds and hearts of three billion people in a world
of only five billion souls.
Shawcross wields his pen with the same mastery as the chief executioner
of the Shogun, who swings his katana. This Englishman makes a cutting
remark and the wound stands agape long before the blood oozes.
Murdoch the book is hard to put down. Murdoch the tycoon, whose assets
are worth US$12 billion (RM32.4 billion), is fascinating to the core.
Those who know a little about this Australian may be tempted to spit on
him at first sight, or kiss the feet of the man who has saved the middle
class from what could be a series of long and uneventful evenings.
Rupert Murdoch, grandson and great-grandson of two preachermen, now
stalks the earth with his arsenal of high-tech machines, fully armed to
face the next century of information technology.
In 1992, when this biography was in its first edition, Murdoch
commented: "I deliberately did not read it ... It's his (Shawcross')
version - hes a very good journalist and it's journalism, which is all any
biography really is. He managed to offend everybody, from my wife, my
family, my mother, my friends and certainly all my enemies ...." To any
journalist turned novelist, that would be considered the ultimate
compliment.
Shawcross' unauthorised journey through Murdoch's life not only uncovers
and exposes the media baron's corporate escapades but also spotlights his
newspapers like The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times of London and his
editors, past and present.
In the roller-coaster no-brakes-ride through the book's 16 chapters,
there are unforgettable, sometimes humorous episodes of newsmen's
encounters in the editorial department with the man who impressed many and
disillusioned even a larger number. Men like Kelvin Mackenzie of The Sun,
who has been described as "bloody Kelvin - he's mad, but a genius," who in
turn said Murdoch is "smart as a wagonload of monkeys."
Murdoch's papers have been labelled by his enemies as `shit sheets'. The
owner himself described as a `larrikin' (Australian trouble-maker) selling
`excrement' to the masses.
Such emotive words concerning Murdoch are not surprising when The Sun,
whose policy is to "shock and amaze on every page", comes up with
memorable headlines like: `STICK IT UP YOUR PUNTER' (a lively history of
The Sun), `STRAIGHT SEX CANNOT GIVE YOU AIDS - OFFICIAL' and `UP YOURS,
DELORS' (front page jab at the French European Commissioner, accompanied
by a huge reversed two-finger picture).
In the previous abode of journalists called Fleet Street, now
strategically placed Wapping, Murdoch's trashy Sun and News of the World
have earned the ignominous Press badge known as `bonk journalism'. Murdoch
has been reported to be occasionally proud of The Sun's achievements. Its
millions of readers obviously think something of it, and they have the
topless Page Three Girl to egg them on.
The private side of Murdoch's life is sadly lacking in this biography,
though one shouldn't blame Shawcross for that. He did make several brave
attempts to corner the man who now prowls the doorsteps of all Asian
countries to catch a glimpse of, or perhaps an insight into Murdoch, on
the other side of midnight. But the Press baron's calendar is fully booked
365 days of the year and he's not the cantankerous sort.
The media generals who had the privilege, and for some, the dishonour,
of viewing posi-proofs with Murdoch are unsuspectingly caught with their
pens down by Shawcross. Some, like Andrew Neil of The Sunday Times,
received dishonourable mention in connection with his onetime girlfriend
Pamela Bordes, and all the bad publicity that came with it.
But Murdoch's information empire nearly came to grief in 1991, when it
was bogged down by debts which amounted to US$2 billion (RM5.4 billion).
As cracks appeared along the financial pillars, Murdoch called in his
hand-picked damage control team headed by one Ann Lane to pull him back
from the brink.
Lane's policy was summarised in two lines: "We are where we are. Nobody
gets out." History tells us that against frightening odds, the strategy
worked. Murdoch survived to expand and push back the final frontier of
communications to the outer limits. He went on to `conquer' space and now
practically rules the commercial skies.
Shawcross has made passing references to one of Murdoch's `lieutenants'
who has seen better days in journalism. Harold Evans, a one-time editor of
The Times of London and The Sunday Times, was one of the many newsmen who
thought he could cut a good deal in collaborating with the man who has
been compared, perhaps unfairly, with the now infamous Robert Maxwell of
The Mirror. Murdoch hated the comparison.
The outcome of the short-lived relationship between Evans and Murdoch
was the birth of Good Times, Bad Times, after Evans was unceremoniously
shown the door. In his book, Evans portrayed Murdoch as "manipulative,
restless, brooding, moody and aggressive", among other adjectives. Others
who were less kind called him "a sinister force," "an evil element," "a
piranha". There were other worse names.
Nobody gets the better of Murdoch while drawing money from his coffers.
In the pages that cover Murdoch's expansionary schemes from Adelaide to
Hollywood, Shawcross finally concludes that "Murdoch and a handful of
others are now reaching and touching the lives of billions of people all
over the world. They are building the foundations of the 21th Century, the
Information Age. Their power is awesome, and the responsibility is
immense."
With the power of global communication now in his hands, Murdoch says he
would like "to leave the world a better place, as I saw it. There will be
others who will say it was a worse place ... I think they would be wrong.
But the worst thing they can say about me now is that I have too much
power. Have we backed some wrong causes? We have probably done so, made
some mistakes. Have we had bad values? Certainly some of our papers have
had horrible lapses of taste and done things which shouldn't be easily
forgiven but ... have we thrown ourselves behind things which today we
consider bad? No. Mistakes maybe."
As with all men of great influence, history will be the final arbiter of
Murdoch's career, the end of which is not within sight. But Shawcross has
made it excitingly clear that Rupert Murdoch the Aussie bastard (whichever
way you define that) can hardly be ignored. Neither can this well-
researched book.