Media Matters Stephen Glover
As he enters his tenth decade, the tycoon is still thrilled by papers
About a year ago, I was told by a friend of his that Rupert Murdoch had vascular dementia. I mention this now because it is clear that he doesn’t – or, if he does, it is to such a small degree as to make not the slightest bit of difference.
The crinkly-skinned media mogul so hated by the Left, who turns 90 on 11th March, is as energetic and engaged in his business as ever.
One of Murdoch’s executives recently told me how excited he had been by the hiring of a senior journalist at the Sunday Times, which he owns.
Here is a man about to enter his tenth decade, the proprietor of a vast if somewhat depleted media empire in Britain, America and Australia, who is still fascinated by the appointment of a single hack.
Friends and employees stream down to his mansion near Henley for lunch or dinner with Murdoch and his fourth wife, the former model Jerry Hall. There may be even more guests than usual since, for obvious reasons, Murdoch is shielding (though he had his first COVID jab before Christmas) and doesn’t go to the swanky new offices by London Bridge, which house the Sun, Times and Sunday Times and his other British-based media businesses.
Just how sharp he remains is clear from his assessment of Robert Maxwell in Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, John Preston’s recently published biography of his old rival, whom he has far surpassed.
Murdoch rightly told Preston that Maxwell was a ‘buffoon’ and that, as far back as the early 1960s, he realised he was ‘obviously a crook’. Murdoch says, ‘I could see the way he was running the Mirror was a joke. Always putting himself on the front page. My pictures never appear in my papers, and preferably no quotes either.’ That’s true.
Many people aged 90 are preparing to meet their maker. Not Rupert Murdoch, whose mother clocked out aged 103. Last year, he reportedly bought a manor house in the ‘Chipping Norton triangle’ in north Oxfordshire which requires considerable and lengthy renovation, with a final bill estimated at £30 million.
One close neighbour will be flamehaired Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of his British media operations. Another will be her friend David Cameron, who in 2008 flew to the tycoon’s yacht in the Mediterranean to seek his blessing.
What, I wonder, does Murdoch think of his tumultuous career, in which he turned an Adelaide newspaper inherited from his father into a sprawling media empire? Perhaps he seldom looks back. Maybe he will go on looking forward to the next excitement until his dying day. A friend describes how, at the end of a long dinner party, he left to fly to China for a meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Let me attempt a fleeting audit, starting with the plus side. He saved the Times from extinction. Since acquiring it in 1981, he has ploughed possibly as much as £300 million into the paper which, 40 years later, is at last modestly profitable. Ironically, Murdoch, who became famous as the tabloid king, may be most remembered as the saviour of the Establishment’s favourite newspaper.
He also built Sky television from scratch – coming close to bankruptcy at the outset – before selling his company’s controlling share for £12 billion in 2018. Sky Sports has enriched several sports, both at the elite level and at the grass roots. Sky Arts provides more arts coverage than the terrestrial channels put together. Sky News pioneered 24-hour news in the UK.
Of course, the Left hated him for his ownership of the once powerful Sun and the now defunct News of the World, which Murdoch closed down in 2011 after the phone-hacking scandal – for which he seems not to have been directly cuplable. The Sun is now a shadow of what it once was, as is the Daily Mirror. The heyday of red-tops is long gone, and so is their power. Whether the Left will loathe him any the less is debatable.
There is a debit side. High on my list is the price war he launched against the Independent in 1993, when it was selling roughly as many copies as the Times. By slashing the cover price of his paper, he initiated the slow decline of its young rival (of which I was a co-founder). Fair, if ruthless, competition, some will say. But the Times was loss-making, and Murdoch’s cross-subsidy of his title to destroy the Independent would in some countries have been illegal.
Murdoch, whatever one thinks of him, is the most successful media tycoon who has ever lived. But will his empire, based as it largely is on the old technology of print, long survive his death? I doubt it. There is no one available to succeed him with even one-tenth of his talent. His empire is too far-flung to hold together without its maverick creator in charge.
But that is all in the future. On the happy occasion of his 90th birthday, I think we can say with confidence that the irrepressible Rupert Murdoch will be with us for a while longer.