Riveting glimpse of a ruthless TV mogul

WHAT do we mean by ‘conservative’? A lot of people would say that Rupert Murdoch’s media organisation and especially his TV station, Fox News, fitted the description. But not me. I never forget that Mr Murdoch, a very clever man, is a republican with little time for monarchy, and kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms when he studied at Oxford.

He’s mainly about money and power. So is Fox TV, which (I suspect without meaning to) helped create the monster which is Donald Trump. Was it conservative for Fox’s grotesque, lecherous boss Roger Ailes to deliberately display attractive women’s bodies to bring in viewers? I don’t think so.

Conservatism supports modesty and courtesy, not the crude exploitation of flesh. But it certainly worked. Nor was it conservative for Ailes to do as he is shown doing in the fascinating film Bombshell, using his casting power to molest and harass his married anchorwomen, including Gretchen Carlson (played by Nicole Kidman, left).

Caught out, Ailes foolishly hoped his boss would rescue him. But the canny Murdoch, played by an actor lost in the midst of a hundredweight of wrinkled latex, explained that the world had changed. From now on, Fox was going to be as #MeToo as everyone else. Nobody, especially the mighty Mr Murdoch, wanted even to hear Ailes’s case, even though he was all-powerful a few weeks before.

This is real ruthlessness, smooth and successful. Lenin would have been proud of him.