By Linda S. Heard

He’s been dubbed the last media baron. He’s the 73rd richest man in the world and apart from world leaders just about the most influential with the power to make presidents and prime ministers quake. He’s adored and despised, praised and condemned, credited with revolutionizing the news industry and at the same time blamed for dragging it down to the lowest common denominator. He’s still gloating over his latest acquisition the prestigious Wall Street Journal. He’s the one and only Rupert Murdoch, an unstoppable, unfathomable enigma, who leans right and then left seemingly on a whim.

Age hasn’t withered 75-year-old Rupert Murdoch’s appetite for a battle. In fact, he’s currently gearing up to launch an attack on the New York Times by revamping the Wall Street Journal and making it free on-line. His recent US$ 5 billion takeover of the Dow Jones, which owns the WSJ, shocked not only its employees but also the paper’s faithful readership, which feared it would become partisan, dumbed-down or even, heaven forbid, vulgar.

But the CEO of 175 media holdings is in the happy position of being immune to brickbats. Individuals may grumble, his competitors may moan but in the end he is the one with the wherewithal to shape public opinion through a global empire that includes Fox News, Sky News, Star TV, the National Geographic Channel, 20th Century Fox, HarperCollins, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, the Times, the News of the World, the Sun and the social networking website MySpace.

“I’m a catalyst for change,” he once said. “You can be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place”.

Former HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan feels so scarred by NewsCorp that she is suing the company for US$ 100 million claiming her sacking was part of a smear campaign against her aimed at protecting the presidential aspirations of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. She claims her former employer asked her to lie to Federal investigators so as to protect the reputation of Giuliani, whom she says Murdoch is backing. NewsCorp denies all allegations; a spokesperson calling them “preposterous”.

While most folk view Murdoch as a right-wing Conservative or even a neo-conservative, his political leanings aren’t so easily defined.

Once a staunch friend of Britain’s former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Murdoch later dropped the Tories in favour of New Labour’s Tony Blair, which prompted the latter’s phenomenal overnight topping of the polls.

A 1995 New York Times article described Murdoch and Labour as “Britain’s new odd couple” and stated “Rupert Murdoch is Britain’s most powerful non-Briton. His media outlets…are so influential that critics charge him with single-handedly destabilizing the monarch and snatching the elections”.

If that was indeed the case, Blair returned the favour in 1988 when he telephoned the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to put out feelers as to whether or not his friend Rupert would encounter opposition to his upcoming purchase of an Italian television network.

During his tenure Rupert Murdoch was a frequent visitor to Number Ten and, according to papers released under the Freedom of Information Act, had three conversations with the Prime Minister in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, which Murdoch strongly supported.

In diaries published by Blair’s chief spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, we learn how Lance Price, then Campbell’s assistant, referred to Murdoch as the 24th member of cabinet.

“His presence was always felt,” Campbell wrote. “No big decision could ever be made inside No. 10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men – Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch. On all the really big decisions anybody else could be safely ignored”.

Prior to Blair’s departure from office there were rumours he would be rewarded with a seat on the NewsCorp board but so far the former PM has been busy with his post as the Quartet’s Middle East peace envoy.

There is some suggestion that a hint from one of Murdoch’s deputies to the effect his boss might swing his weight behind Conservative leader David Cameron in any upcoming elections scared Prime Minister Gordon Brown away from the precipice, forcing him to postpone the ballot until more fortuitous times. In the end, Brown was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t as postponement led to accusations of hypocrisy and dithering.

In the US, the story is similarly confusing. Murdoch’s Fox News was the first to call George W. Bush as president at a time when all the other networks were still betting on Al Gore. In fact, it was Bush’s cousin John Ellis in charge of Fox’s Election Night reporting who declared Bush the victor, and some say tilted the election results in his relative’s favour.

‘Fair and balanced’ Fox News has consistently backed Bush and the Iraq war, while Murdoch has praised Bush for acting “morally” and “correctly” and Blair as being “full of guts”.

Murdoch’s papers reflected his sentiments despite his repeatedly telling journalists that he gives his editors free rein to set the tone of their papers.

For instance, on March 14, 2003 the Sun wrote: “Charlatan Jacques Chirac is basking in cheap applause for his ‘Save Saddam’ campaign but his treachery will cost his people dear. This grandstanding egomaniac has inflicted irreparable damage on some of the most important yet fragile structures of international order”.

The Guardian had this to say. “You have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one canny press tycoon… he has an unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him. How else can we explain the extraordinary unity of thought in his newspaper empire about the need to make war on Iraq?”

In recent times, Murdoch criticised Bush for being “a bad, inadequate communicator”, who freezes whenever a television camera appears. In April this year he told business leaders that the Bush administration would find it hard to achieve anything during its final eighteen months because the anti-Bush sentiment in Washington had become toxic.

In July 2006, the media mogul shocked conservatives and liberals alike by hosting a fundraiser breakfast for presidential contender Hillary Clinton at his Fox News headquarters. David Swanson, writing on OpEdNews.com claims “then he rushed of to a fundraiser lunch for John McCain, and Hillary rushed off to announce her unqualified support for Israel’s and Bush’s war policies”.

Such switches in political allegiances have prompted some Murdoch observers to say his priority is backing winners regardless of their politics.

When it came to the recent Australian elections, Murdoch was coy. He said he preferred to remain silent as his comments there often get him into trouble. He has, however, made his preference for Australian soldiers to remain in Iraq clear and from that one can deduce which side he favoured.

In Georgia, Rupert Murdoch recently found himself unwittingly aligned against the pro-Western government and its leader Mikehil Saakashvili when one of his television stations in that country was ransacked by government troops and shut down during opposition street protests.

The station’s closure prompted Murdoch to give President Saakashvili – a close friend of the Bush White House - a public telling off for his non-Democratic policies, thereby playing into the hands of the pro-Russian opposition. It may be hard to believe but during his youth Murdoch was known as “Rupert the Red”.

In reality, Murdoch had a privileged upbringing and any leftwing leanings he may have had were nothing more than a phase. And although he is sometimes portrayed as a self-made man, in fact, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing.

His father Keith Murdoch was a wealthy newspaper man who sent his son to Oxford University in the hopes he would become a journalist. In his will, he instructed his executors to give Rupert a chance to excel in his own paper The News. It turned out that while Rupert’s journalistic skills were in doubt, he had a penchant for making money and turning around the fortunes of failing ventures.

It wasn’t long before Murdoch junior acquired holdings in various Australian newspapers, and in 1964, he launched Australia’s first national daily The Australian. Flush with enthusiasm and eager to expand abroad, in 1968 he bought Britain’s News of the World using cash gained by mortgaging his Australian assets.

The gamble paid off and in 1973 he acquired his first US paper the San Antonio Express-News. In 1996, Murdoch branched out into cable television with the Fox News Channel which has been accused of being a mouthpiece for Republicans.

Over the years he has made many friends and enemies. He is particularly unpopular with human rights activists for allegedly referring to the Dalai Lama as “a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes” and for what they describe as ‘kowtowing to the Chinese government’.

There has been much speculation over who will take over the Murdoch Empire once its founder retires. Murdoch has been married three times and has six children but only one, James Murdoch, who runs BSkyB currently works in the family business.

James has been described as ‘chip off the old block’ and although he was initially regarded with disdain by the City when he joined BSkyB as the youngest FTSE 100 chief executive in history, he has managed to garner respect from shareholders thus quietening accusations of nepotism.

In November, James was nominated by the Telegraph as the most influential American in the UK. As probable heir apparent to the Murdoch fortunes, like his father before him it’s likely he’ll one day progress to becoming the most influential man in the world. Watch out!

 

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