Rupert Murdoch, The Power Of Corporate Media Chains Over Governments, And Why Canadians Must Take Heed

By Imogen Reed

The Leveson Inquiry in London, England has opened the doors onto the murky world of the political influence wielded by Rupert Murdoch and his global media conglomerate News Corporation.

The operational dynamics of Murdoch, News Corp and the likes of ex-News of the World senior editor Rebekah Brooks have revealed how corporate media actors negotiate the power dynamics of the network society to serve their overarching business goals.

Over a period of decades, Rupert Murdoch appears to have used different strategies to penetrate new markets and expand audience share. These strategies have included political brokering, leveraging public opinion, stretching the boundaries of media content, and diversifying and adapting media holdings in the face of technological and regulatory changes.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has an extensive global reach, with a presence in most countries and annual revenue of more than $31 billion (£19bn).  In Murdoch’s country of birth, Australia, Newscorp. owns 150 national and local papers plus 44 per cent of the Sky Network. In Asia, News Corp, under the Star name, owns nine cable channels and has a significant share in eight others.  It has a 20 per cent share in India Tata Sky Channel. The company also owns the Wall Street journal’s Asia edition.  In Latin America News Corp have significant shares in three broadcasters, LAPT, Telecine and Fox Telecolombia.

In the United States and Canada, News Corp owns several high profile newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Community Newspaper group and the financial papers Barons and MarketWatch. News Corp also has widespread ownership of U.S. television with the Fox Network and National Geographic Channels. The company also own ten film companies including 20^th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures. Internationally News Corp owns HarperCollins Publishing and MySpace social networking site.

In the UK, News Corp owns three British newspapers the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun. News Corp did own Britain’s biggest selling newspaper the News of the World, but this closed down amid a phone hacking scandal. The company also own 39% of British Sky Broadcasting (BSKyB) and was hoping to buy it outright but this has proved a very controversial process. In Italy, News Corp owns Sky Italis and in Germany 45% in Sky Deutschland.

News Corp is therefore truly global and diversified into all areas of media.

Rupert Murdoch told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that he has never asked a prime minister for anything.  This statement, however, is an attempt to mask a huge balancing of power.  The BBC’s Andrew Neil, who is the former editor of the Sunday Times which is owned by News Corporation, said Tony Blair, as leader of the opposition, once told him ”how we treat Mr. Murdoch’s businesses will depend on how Mr. Murdoch’s papers treat us”.

The political influence in Britain can be traced back to the 1980’s when Murdoch formed a close alliance with the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A secret meeting between Murdoch and Thatcher paved the way for News International to buy the Times and the Sunday Times in 1981. The Sun newspaper credited itself for helping her successor John Major win an unexpected election victory in the 1992 election. However John Major recently revealed at the Leveson Inquiry that “It became apparent in discussion that Mr. Murdoch really didn’t like our European policies, which was no surprise to me, and he wished me to change our European policies” and “If we couldn’t … his paper would not and could not support the Conservative Government”. Shortly after that meeting, Mr. Murdoch’s flagship tabloid, The Sun, switched allegiance to Tony Blair’s Labour Party, which won the general election in May 1997, ending 18 years of Conservative rule.

In the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005 Murdoch’s papers were either neutral or supported Tony Blair’s Labour. Some have therefore argued that in this case Murdoch was simply supporting the incumbent party as the easiest way to continue to influence government decisions that could affect his business.

In America, News Corp was also able to influence elections. The former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch stated of his endorsement by the New York Post that it made “the difference between winning and losing, and I am very grateful.”

In 1989, Mr. Murdoch’s New York Post endorsed Mr. Giuliani over David D Dinkins. Mr. Giuliani’s media adviser Roger E Ailes went onto start and run Fox News. Murdoch said in London that he did not use his political ties for his business interests, but he and his executives did turn to Mayor Giuliani for help after the Time Warner Cable New York City Group rejected their request for Fox News to have a channel, according to court records and news accounts at the time.

Every politician who has given evidence to Lord Leveson has expressed their deep concern over the destructive sway the press, and in particular the Murdoch press, holds over Britain’s political system. “We all did too much cosying up to Rupert Murdoch,” said David Cameron. “Yes,” replied Tony Blair when asked if his own relationship had been too close. The “personal relationships between Mr. Blair, Mr. Brown and Rupert Murdoch became closer than was wise,” admitted Peter Mandelson. “In retrospect we all should have been more wary about our relationships with them,” conceded Ed Miliband.

Although all the politicians conceded Murdoch’s influence was negative, none of them admitted they were actually influenced by him. The crux of the Leveson inquiry was whether Murdoch ever let his business considerations influence his newspapers’ coverage a fact that Murdoch denied.

In many countries across the world, there is no doubt that money is exchanged for political influence, this is not the case here. There is never any insinuation that credit cards or illicit bank transfers are involved! Instead the process is so much more subtle, power is a matter of complex relationships, and Murdoch above all has been a magician in his work, always staying (or perhaps appearing to stay) on the right side of the law personally whilst many around him have fallen on their swords.

The News Corp bubble in Britain maybe burst but its lasting influences especially on Europe will remain. Countries like Canada would do well to heed the warning that in our ever growing global media world one media business can have the power, ever more easily, to influence political decisions to their own ends.

Imogen Reed is a pen name for Betsy Rogers, a freelance finance writer from England who writes primarily about buy to let insurance .

For a story on Canada’s Neo-Con prime minister Stephen Harper playing footsy with Rupert Murdoch, Fox News and the owners and operators of the right-wing  Canada-based corporate media chain Quebecor/Sun Media (current owner of the Niagara, Ontario dailies, the St. Catharines Standard, Welland Tribune and Niagara Falls Review) visit this post from the online Canadian news and commentary site Rabble by clicking on  http://rabble.ca/news/2010/08/how-fox-north-became-harper%E2%80%99s-priority .

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