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27 July 2011
Posted in
Comment -
Britain
Photography: Mitchell_Hall
In 1986 Rupert Murdoch, Commander-in-Chief of News International, launched a battle that would determine the future of the printed press in the United Kingdom. Arrayed against him were the National Graphical Association, its allies in the Trades Union Congress, the assorted platoons of the hard left, and the Labour Party. At his back were the bulk of his journalists, the Thatcher government, and the police. For over a year, News International’s new printworks in Wapping were besieged by the serried ranks of the labour movement.
The Wapping Dispute takes its place alongside the Grunwick picket and the miner’s strike as one of the defining left-right battles of the Seventies and Eighties. Depending on your perspective, it was either an evil corporate empire rolling over the little guy, or a courageous assault on restrictive practices and labour monopolists who were strangling the newspaper industry to death. Either retelling casts it as a titanic struggle between primary political forces, replete with a full cast of heroes, victims and villains.
Yet like all history, both retellings consist of a factual skeleton which the historian fleshes out with the meat of their own prejudices. Real life, on the other hand, can rarely be divided so cleanly into black and white. While fortune might occasionally present a Mother Teresa or a Pol Pot, the vast majority of real people exhibit a healthy mixture of good and bad behaviour motivated by countless unique combinations of ethics and circumstances. Pantomime villains remain the stuff of, well, pantomime.
Yet in their treatment of the hacking scandal many commentators appear almost wilfully determined to engage with Murdoch the right-wing phantom, rather than Murdoch the man. To restore some sense of proportion to the debate surrounding News International, it is necessary to disinter the factual skeleton of the case from the mountain of prejudicial flesh heaped upon it by hostile commentators.
This uncomfortable fact – that even our ideological enemies are painted in shades of grey - is frustrating for many, but perhaps none more than journalist. After all, our entire trade consists of turning real life events into ‘stories’. Can we really be blamed for reaching for one of the crutches of story-writing: clear cut villains? Borrowing aspects of fiction writing allows us to construct a nice, easily explicable narrative for the reader (and, although few would care to admit it, ourselves as well). The downside is that it can lead to the substitution of considered character judgement with absurd caricature. Which brings us nicely to the Dark Lord of the Sith himself: Rupert Murdoch.
The reputation Mr Murdoch has acquired in his post-eighties career as the UK’s most fashionably detestable media baron is frankly extraordinary. Various people ascribe to him shadowy, almost sorcerous powers of manipulation and control, and the idea persists that Rupert Murdoch somehow dominates the British media. The Student Journal’s very own Tash Clark in a recent article defends the free press “despite how dominated it might seem by Murdoch and his sly empire”, and posits that this is “our only chance” to prevent Murdoch “dominating the media.” Let’s take a look at that.
News International operates three (it will be four when the widely anticipated Sun on Sunday materialises) national newspapers in the United Kingdom: two dailies (The Times and The Sun) and one weekly (The Sunday Times), though until recently The News of the World too. Yet it can’t be simply the fact of owning several newspapers that justifies the reputation of Murdoch’s ‘empire’, because Northern & Shell also operates four (the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star and The Daily Star Sunday) and both Associated Newspapers (the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Metro) and Trinity Mirror plc. (the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People) operate three apiece, more if one were to include non-national publications.
If not the fact of owning four papers, what then justifies the reputation of ‘the Murdoch press’ as a dominant force? The closest I can come to an answer is circulation. The Sun enjoys “the largest circulation of any newspaper in the United Kingdom” at almost 2.8 million (with an estimated 7.6 million total readership). The Times, while enjoying a much smaller circulation of roughly half a million, is still the second most popular ‘broadsheet’ behind the Telegraph and surveys suggest it is the leading newspaper for business people. It is not unfair to claim that ‘the Murdoch press’ consists of fairly influential titles.
But this is still insufficient. High as the Sun’s circulation is, it isn’t enough to carry News International comfortably into the lead in terms of total owned circulation. Two Associated Newspapers titles, the Daily Mail and the Metro, command readerships of over two million and 1.35 million respectively, giving them a higher total circulation than the competing Murdoch press. Furthermore, neither of the NI daily papers are the most partisan on the market. Can anybody suggest with a straight face that the Times and the Sun have been as loyal to the Conservatives as the Telegraph, or as the Guardian and the Mirror to Labour?
Taken collectively, News International’s newspapers are neither the most widely-read nor the most partisan on the market. Neither has he broken competition regulations, nor does he own an unreasonable amount of titles. What precisely do people mean when they say they want the press to be less dominated by Murdoch? Any ‘dominance’ exercised by the News International titles is a result of people freely choosing to buy them over the alternatives. Is it Rupert Murdoch’s fault that the Guardian’s readership is too small to be commercially viable, leading to it being propped up by the profits of Auto Trader and having to contemplate closing the Observer? Why should News International be subjected to more punitive regulations than other media concerns, or penalised for producing popular newspapers?
As far as I can see, calls to curb the ‘Murdoch Press’ are based less on a rational assessment of his (entirely legal) market share and more on personal and political antipathy to the man himself, News Corporation and the ‘big business’ they represent. Murdoch attracts this hostility for a couple of reasons. The first is that he was one of the big beasts of the Eighties and, unlike Thatcher and the other faded giants of that era, he still commands an active presence in British political life. For many, he is defined by the breaking of the print unions in ’86 or the knifing of Kinnock in ’92. For more still his British papers simply attract the reflected execration directed at his American concerns, in particular Fox News and its association with that paragon of hate-chic, George W. Bush. But Fox News being partisan and George Bush being unpopular are not good reasons to stop Murdoch owning The Times.
None of this is to negate the importance of the hacking scandal. If it turns out that Rupert Murdoch or another senior executive authorised the more detestable violations of personal privacy, I fully expect those people to be fired and prosecuted if the law requires it. But let’s not pretend this is just about the hacking scandal, or that people’s responses would have been the same if another, more anonymous newspaper operator had owned the paper charged with these allegations.
Once again, News International is under siege. Although the National Graphical Association has long since amalgamated its way into irrelevance, there’s a long queue of jealous media rivals and vengeful political opponents that have been waiting a long time to punish or destroy outright this man and his papers, and they’re joined by opportunist politicians willing to turn on the head of a pin in order to try to cash some cheap popularity out of an on-going criminal investigation.
Before we all join the trendy lynch mob, we should remember the great contributions that Rupert Murdoch has made to British journalism, perhaps none greater than his saving the very existence of print newspapers in Britain from extinction in the mid-Eighties. All of us who aspire to be journalists today owe some debt, whether we like the man or not, to Rupert Murdoch and News International.
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Henry Hill
Henry Hill studies Journalism in Manchester and is a Contributor at TSJ. He is the 8th ranked Conservative blogger in the UK.
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Comments
In my experience, people who don't believe that ordinary, grown-up human beings are capable of exercising free will are closet totalitarians at best. If you genuinely believe that a human, given £1 and a selection of competing products that cost £1 is incapable of genuinely making a decision you disagree with, then you have much less faith in humanity than I do - and I'm meant to be the right-winger here.
Quoting BK:
You keep saying that my argument is inconsistent but you don't say how. I've clearly distinguished between the broad-strokes and the operational level of business leadership, a fact you've yet to counter with detail or evidence. Additionally, if phone hacking is a particularly Murdoch-based phenomenon I invite you to explain the unfolding revelations regarding the Mirror.
Quoting BK:
This is just a desperately uncharitable attempt to avoid giving Murdoch credit for something - or in your own words, "to justify your own personal political prejudices [rather] than trying to actually engage with the subject." If Murdoch can be given no credit for Wapping and all agency - whether triumphant or not - lies with the labour movement and the government, why did no other newspaper operator in the UK take the NGA on until Murdoch had done it? Why did he risk his business in a confrontation when others would not? Also, a victory for Murdoch WAS a defeat for the labour movement, they aren't mutually exclusive.
Quoting BK:
Quoting BK:
*ahem*
Quoting BK:
That may be, I wouldn't know as I don't read it, but you aren't comparing like with like. If you want to compare your favourite broadsheets to the Murdoch press compare them to the Murdoch broadsheet, the Times, a comparison which I understand doesn't actually support your point.
Quoting BK:
So, if I read this paragraph correctly you think: that the fact that I don't ascribe particular value to an opinion purely on the basis that a celebrity is expressing it means that I don't believe the media has an educational role; that left-wing celebrities promoting their opinions in the media is 'free choice' but right-wing media outlets doing the same is psychological brainwashing; and that by daring to defend News International I must be someone who reads the Sun and only values a newspaper with tits in it.
I'm pretty sure that, having summarised it, most readers on this site will be able to call that bullshit themselves.
Quoting BK:
Why not? Even if you weren't interested in such, asking me to leave your views unchallenged in a public forum is a bit rich.
Oh I don't think you've been paid by anyone and wouldn't suggest that and am sorry if you think I implied that. On the other hand I'm sure you'll make a fine editor of a murdoch owned news agency one day. I think this article is more about trying to justify your own personal political prejudices than trying to actually engage with the subject. The phone hacking case was not simply a small part of the murdoch empire but was something that the murdoch family was deeply involved in. As I've said when it comes to the successes of his newspapers you associate this with murdoch and when it comes to the failures you blame them on newspapers. this is not so much a mistake but rather an inconsistency of your argument which shows that put aside the factual disputes to one side, your argument isn't consistent within itself. As for 'Murdoch's success in the wapping dispute' that is more the failure of labour the unions who were trying to fight to stay relevant and the uk left in general rather than a success of Murdoch. I believe labour was wrong in giving in so much to the unions and that the unions made themselves irrelevant by being unreasonable. But Murdoch had the full backing of the tactcher government and was by no means an architect of this so called achievement.
May I point to you, that it was you and not I who compared the guardian with the sun. In any case to my eyes, for the reason I have explained below, the sun, which is murdoch owned and as you yourself have said has the largest circulation in the country, is nothing but a mouthpiece for the murdoch empire's business interests.
Finally I, unlike you, take great political lessons from sketches and theatre as I do from all forms of art from opera to rap. In fact most political theorists have been inspired by artists of their time. When we are surrounded by celebrities all the time and live in a culture so embedded with them, it would be most foolish of you to think that celebrities and the title of being a celebrity has nothing to do with politics or that they are not influential on our political agenda. Perhaps this is the difference between you and me, I think that the media ought not to only cater to the immediate passions of their viewers but educate and facilitate free choice. Therefore celebrities ought to be political and newspapers ought to other duties than printing out tits.
PS: If you are going to respond with a cliche neoliberal defence of market economy in which you try to rationalise the process with which newspapers are bought and sold on the market place please don't.
I'd be interested to know *why* you think that people freely exercising choice doesn't actually represent people freely exercising choice. I'm sure it isn't, but it looks a bit like the "Rupert Murdoch: Mind Controller" conspiracy nonsense used by people trying to explain the popularity of his papers without conceding that people like them.
Finally, I think I make a fair distinction between things that Murdoch was directly responsible for (Wapping, the broad-strokes, long-term style of his papers) and the wrongdoing that occurred at the level of day-to-day operations of a small part of the media empire. Again, if you think I'm wrong here please explain why, and if you question my motives please say what it is you think I'm up to. I assure you I've taken no Murdoch Shilling.
P.S. I don't tend to ascribe any great value to the political opinions of celebrities - if their point was good, please make it yourself.
The problem is your premise that a free market model prima facie provides the maximum "choice" and "freedom" for people or as perhaps you would call them "consumers". I respectfully disagree with this premise. I do not think that the only measure of a news paper is how many people buy them and I do not think just because a person buys a news paper this shows that they have freely chosen it.
Another inconsistency I see in your argument is that, when it suits you, you associate the achievements of Rupert Murdoch with his company News International. Similarly you attribute the achievements of his news papers to him, when you say the Sun has the largest circulation in the UK you attribute this to the success of Rupert Murdoch. But when his failings are concerned you suddenly draw a line between rupert Murdoch and his companies. Suddenly you disassociate Fox with Murdoch. Similarly you completely ignore the close link between the Murdoch family and the phone hacking scandal. To my eyes this makes me question your motives. To finish I think I should let Stephen Fry and Hugh Laruie take the word: www.youtube.com/.../
As for the FOX thing, I've said before and I'll say again that this is about Murdoch's BRITISH concerns. You may object to how Fox operates, but it is a News Corp company whose operation is overseen by completely different people - and is operating in a completely different environment - to News International. Unless you have some evidence that News International passes memos around the offices of the Sun and the Times, please take arguments about FOX to an article about FOX.
By the by, would it kill you to use a less dismissive tone?
@Tash: Well, I didn't write the strap line, one of the editors did.
The Metro thing isn't invalid so much as irrelevant. The fact that the Metro is free doesn't lessen its influence, besdides which you can't simply state what its paid-up readership would be because neither of us can know that.
The fact that Associated Newspapers operate a freesheet says more about their determination to exert influence than anything about the Murdoch press. Running a free paper is about reaching people - you can't just overlook it when claiming Murdoch's influence is greater.
Jordan - I won't rule it out just because I have no clue what I'll be doing in the future, or where the Times will be when I come to start looking for a job. Plus, I have no idea what it would be like. As long as I'm not asked to phone hack or write in Murdoch-speak, I think I could do it. I have, ironically, just got some work experience there, so I guess we'll see!
"Thanks Tash, but I'm not sure where your first paragraph came from: my whole point is that the number of outlets Murdoch owns is neither excessive nor exceptional, not that he's done well for himself and owns a lot." You might want to check the intro paragraph to your article then, which reads "Before castigating media mogul Rupert Murdoch, we should consider the achievements of the man who has pioneered British journalism, Henry Hill writes." This does imply that the main point of the article is his achievements.
"I hope, that Murdoch's position in the British media market is not exceptional. There are other providers that own as many, or nearly as many, papers as him." - It has, I didn't realise a lot of what you mentioned. My point was that (as far as I know) Murdoch is a global media phenomenon, and thus is different. Also, his influence spreads over more than just newspapers as a platform, it is also over TV too.
I think the metro point is still valid, because it would not have such a high circulation if it was not free.
With regards to views in the media, I never said I wanted them all to be given equal market share, just that the media should represent more than just a few views. Obviously papers like the Sun are popular because people are reading what they like, but with the decline of newspaper readership, maybe not all people's views are.
- Oh please. The Guardian didn't even support Labour in the last elections. Maybe they had a bit lib-dem bias but they didn't even support labour. I remember very well the editorial piece they did before the elections where they themselves admitted they didn't know whether to support labour or libdems. They constantly criticise labour and ed miliband. On the other hand Fox another Murdoch owned news outlet actually has memos passed to every person on their organisation describing the republican line they should take that day. They all use pre scripted words and memos to ensure that they all use the same language and give the same republican message. As for the Sun they sucked up to the Conservatives so much in the last election that I couldn't tell the Sun from the Conservative leaflets that were being put through my door everyday. I'm sorry but it should be you who can't obviously stand behind this comment with a serious face. Get real man.
In my opinion you have to judge Murdoch's 'dominance' by the influence he has in an individual market - this is why I focused on the Britain. Murdoch could have a presence in all manner of international media outlets without being 'dominant'.
I don't have the time to forensically analyse the Australian and American media markets, but my article has demonstrated, I hope, that Murdoch's position in the British media market is not exceptional. There are other providers that own as many, or nearly as many, papers as him.
The fact that the Metro is free doesn't negate my point, because that point was about influence through circulation, not profitability.
This, though, I take issue with:
Quote:
Which people do you want the media to reflect, exactly? The best way to get a truly representative press is to lift market share restrictions and let people buy what they want. The Murdoch papers reflect their readership, because otherwise people wouldn't buy them. That sentence looks like special pleading for all views to be given equal market share regardless of how popular they are with the buying public, which I'm rather opposed too.
Out of curiosity Tash, how do you - in your own mind - reconcile the contrasting positions you present here? You complain about Murdoch and his "control" (and dominance over output) but say you wouldn't rule out working for him.