In October, the New Yorker ran a detailed
profile of Rupert Murdoch by John Cassidy.
It begins 30 years ago, in 1977, with Murdoch singlehandedly electing Ed Koch
as mayor of New York. It’s worth quoting some of the rest of the profile at
length:
In 1995, Blair travelled nine thousand miles to Hayman Island, on the Great
Barrier Reef, to deliver a keynote address at a News Corp. retreat. In the
speech, he described himself as a radical modernizer, and as the natural heir
to Margaret Thatcher…
On July 28th, Blair flew to San Francisco on a trip that was described as
an effort to promote British technology companies. Many of the British reporters
who accompanied him knew better. “The real reason he is here now is
because Rupert Murdoch invited him here to meet with all of his executives,”
Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, told KCBS, a Bay Area radio
station, referring to the News Corp. retreat that Murdoch was hosting in Pebble
Beach that week….
Blair delivered the opening-night speech. “Rupert, it’s great
to be back at the News Corp. Conference after all these years,” he began.
“When I first met you, I wasn’t sure I liked you, but I feared
you. Now that my days of fighting elections are over, I don’t actually
fear you, but I do like you.”
On August 2nd, the second-to-last day of the conference, Bill Clinton arrived…
Hillary Clinton, who has been attacked by the left for her support of the
Iraq war, has been reluctant to talk about her relationship with Murdoch,
but her spokesman, Philippe Reines, said, “Senator Clinton respects
him and thinks he’s smart and effective.”…
“He’s savvier, and he has far better understanding of how to influence
government, than anybody else I’ve ever met in the media,” Reed
Hundt, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the body
that regulates the broadcasting industry, told me. “He’s just
smarter about that than everybody else.”…
Tony Blair was pro-Europe when he came to office, but many British commentators,
including some of his own former aides, believe that he modified his policies
to satisfy Murdoch. “Blair was very keen to join the European monetary
system,” Lance Price, a former media adviser at 10 Downing Street, said
to me. “But at every stage of the way he stepped back. And one of the
main reasons he pulled back was that Rupert Murdoch was vehemently opposed
to closer links with Europe.” Price recently published a book, “The
Spin Doctor’s Diary,” in which he writes about Murdoch’s
influence on the Blair government. “It was never discussed in black-and-white
terms,” Price told me. “Nobody ever said, ‘We have to do
this because Murdoch supports it.’ But his views were always heard.
And they were heard ahead of many Cabinet ministers’.”
Downing Street won’t say how many meetings Blair has had with Murdoch,
but Murdoch has spent more time with him and Gordon Brown than he did with
Margaret Thatcher. “She didn’t go out of her way to develop a
personal relationship with me,” Murdoch said. “But Tony Blair
and Gordon Brown, whenever I’m in town they say, ‘Can’t
you come over for a cup of tea?’ When you’re invited by the Prime
Minister to have a cup of tea, you have a cup of tea. It’s sometimes
very inconvenient—if you’re only there two days and you have a
month’s work to do.” Murdoch went on, “And you have to be
careful to have a cup of tea with them both, or they are very suspicious that
you are lining up with the other one.”
This is, without a doubt, a portrait of a global statesman. Murdoch might not
receive a lot of respect in the Wall Street Journal’s newsroom, but he has had
prime access to the most powerful people in the world for decades. Which is
why I’m puzzled that Brad DeLong can write
this:
Can Murdoch make the financials work to make the Journal a good way for News
Corp. to spend $6 billion? I doubt it. Can he find enough synergies to make
the financials not be a total disaster? I think so. And in the meantime will
it give him a platform on which he can play global statesman for a decade?
Yes.
This is the "return on ego" argument for why Murdoch wants to buy
the Wall Street Journal, and to some small degree it surely holds some truth.
But the fact remains that Murdoch is already a global statesman, and he has
been one for decades. In fact, he has been the most powerful press baron in
the world for many years now. Owning the Journal would, at the margin, increase
his influence. But Rupert is not some déclassé billionaire with
more money than clout.
As for the Journal’s newsroom, I think that Murdoch would certainly shake it
up – but he wouldn’t cut it back. I think he would significantly expand
the number of journalists that the Journal has overseas, and that he would turn
the Journal’s anachronistic front page into a must-read destination for breaking
news, rather than giving over vast amounts of hugely valuable real estate to
quirky magazine-style feature articles of no real import. Those are "the
long articles that bore Rupert Murdoch," in DeLong’s words, and frankly
the vast majority of them don’t belong on the front page of a daily newspaper,
if they belong in a daily newspaper at all. The front page of a newspaper should
be a home for news – and if that happens at the Journal, there’s a good
chance that Murdoch is going to need more journalists, not fewer.