We posted our Blog (Life in the Bus Lane, #21) at 07.32 on Thursday 7th July, last. In it we criticised the phone-hacking scandal which then centred on The News of The World (NoW). By 17.15 that same day James Murdoch was announcing the imminent closure of the NoW, with the issue on the following Sunday to be its last. ‘Back of the net!’ as they say on the terraces…Bow to the awesome power of The Bus Lane! ‘Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!’[1]
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, ‘after this therefore because of this’… ah the transitory joys of the supreme logical fallacy. For a moment back there we thought The Bus Lane had hit the big time in terms of our power and influence on events. But, come to think of it, if for “Ozymandias” you read Murdoch in Shelley’s sonnet, then there’s a whole other connection to be made anyway.
Meanwhile - back to reality – we would not have wanted to bring about the closure of The News of the World even supposing that we could. The fact that Rupert Murdoch ordered its closure perfectly illustrates the core of the problem. As far as he is concerned, what gets published is what he wants published and what would he care if – to save his imperial arse - four hundred people are suddenly sent down the road? Murdoch’s solution to the NoW problem was characteristically that of a New York Mafia boss – Where is Luca Brasi? -“He sleeps with the fishes.”[2]
If our Press Complaints Commission had any gumption, any backbone or any sense of purpose it would have refused to allow the closure of a financially viable national newspaper and insisted that publication resume just as soon as ownership and control had been transferred to a collective of the people who work there. The problem was not the newspaper; it was the owner and the executive creeps he sent out from Manhattan
The late Dennis Potter[3] named the pancreatic cancer that eventually killed him, “Rupert”. In a piece to camera he did for ‘Opinions’ on Channel Four Television in 1993, Potter said: “I’m going to get down there in the gutter where so many journalists crawl…What I’m about to do is to make a provenly vindictive and extremely powerful enemy…the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch…Hannibal the Cannibal…”[4]
In March 1993, Potter gave a last interview to Melvyn Bragg which was also broadcast on Channel Four. In it, Potter said of Rupert Murdoch, “There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press, and the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life…”[5]
If we knew, nearly twenty years ago, that Murdoch brought a malignancy first to journalism, then to politics and eventually to televised-sport, why is it only now that our political elite have found the courage to stand-up to him? Here in The Bus Lane, we have conducted a boycott of the Murdoch Empire ever since The Times and The Sunday Times fell into his grasp. Not buying The Sun was never difficult but we have missed thousands of hours of Test Cricket and Premiership Football because of our refusal to subscribe to Sky Sports. Murdoch will not have missed our paltry shillings, but it would have been a joy to shout I told you so! – if only we had not just discovered that The Dirty Digger also owns our favourite box sets: The Sopranos, The Wire and Madmen. God-dammit! As Count Arthur Strong might have warned; “His testicles are everywhere…”[6]
Rupert Murdoch’s genius lay in spotting that in the likes of Tony Blair, Boris Bullingdon and ‘call me Dave’ Cameron (and many, many, others) we had the best, most venal, most opportunistic and most self-obsessed political class that money could buy. So he bought them. Once he had shown them the power of his media interests he knew that he had them by the balls and such was their ambition and their gullibility that their hearts and minds soon followed. And having pocketed his politicians, why would any of our senior police or sports administrators hold out against him? They could plainly see that he owned a majority in the House of Commons; lock, stock and rotten barrel.
So when the Serjeant-at-arms hauls the Murdochs – father & son - into the dock in front of the Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee next Tuesday, let’s not beat about the bush. Let’s go Aussie and call a spade a bloody shovel. And let’s hear someone demanding to know what they’re offering by way of compensation for our corrupted politics, corrupted cops, corrupted sport …oh, and corrupted journalism.
[1] Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1818
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
[2] The Godfather. Mario Puzo. 1969
[3] Dennis Potter, English journalist, television producer, playwright and author. 1935-1994.
[4] Quoted by Craig Brown in the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times. 28 March 1993.
[5] Dennis Potter – interview with Melvyn Bragg 15 March 1994. Broadcast on Channel 4, 5 April 1994. Transcript available at www.guardian.co.uk – News – Great Interviews.
[6] Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show. Steve Delaney. BBC Radio 4. 2005ff.
No comments:
Post a Comment