Despite the Conservatives’ defeat in the recent general election, the right-wing media in Britain appears to be thriving – judging by the eye-watering price for which the weekly right-wing magazine The Spectator has just been sold.
The Spectator was founded in 1828 and has published continuously since then – making it the world’s oldest surviving magazine. It has always been considered the “house journal” of the Conservative Party, with its editorship often used as a stepping stone to political prominence (most recently by Boris Johnson).
But that may be about to change. The magazine has just been sold to UK hedge-fund investor Sir Paul Marshall for £100 million. This is a staggering sum for a publication that, in 2023, turned a profit of just £2.6 million.
Sir Paul Marshall. Source: Wikipedia
The purchase makes Marshall one of the most influential media magnates in the UK, potentially second only to Rupert Murdoch. So what does his purchase of the Spectator mean for the right-wing press? And indeed, for the Conservatives, to whom he has donated more than half a million pounds.
In 2017, after a successful career in the City of London, Marshall purchased the right-wing news and opinion website UnHerd.
But it was the role he played in the launch of Britain’s first politically opinionated news channel – GB News – that brought him to real prominence on the British media scene’s right flank.
The channel first started broadcasting in 2021 but was soon in financial trouble. Marshall, who owned 38% of the company, stepped in. By injecting a total of £40 million into the channel, he enabled it to keep going and expand its influence.
As I have found in my research into the media company, its relatively low viewing figures are not an accurate depiction of its impact. GB News reaches a vast audience through its website and social media presence (2.7 million viewers to its website per month, and 1.3 million YouTube subscribers).
The channel has courted controversy since launch, primarily by its use of Conservative and other right-wing politicians as presenters. It has often featured Tory MPs as presenters interviewing Tory ministers. It has been repeatedly investigated by Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, and has been found in breach of its impartiality rules twelve times.
Marshall has also had his eyes on an even more important player in Britain’s right-wing media ecology. The Daily Telegraph and its sister paper the Sunday Telegraph have been regarded as the Conservatives’ flagship serious newspapers ever since the daily began publication in 1855.
The papers are up for open auction after a previous bid by Abu Dhabi-backed consortium RedBird IMI to take over both the Spectator and Telegraph collapsed. The purchase was largely funded by United Arab Emirates vice-president Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who also owns Manchester City Football Club, and the government intervened to introduce legislation banning foreign governments from owning UK media.
Marshall’s rightward move
Marshall has given assurances about guaranteeing non-interference in the Spectator’s editorial and political line.
But Conservatives would be mistaken if they thought the expansion of Marshall’s media empire was unmitigated good news. His evolution from Liberal Democrat activist to GB News backer gives an indication as to where the Spectator could go under his ownership. In 2004, Marshall co-edited The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, which sought to turn his party from the centre-left of British politics towards the centre, or even centre-right.
As the Brexit referendum came into view, Marshall left the Lib Dems to campaign for, and fund, the Leave campaign. From that point on Marshall gave significantly to the Conservative party.
At the start of 2024, anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate uncovered evidence that Marshall had “liked” Islamophobic and anti-migrant social media content. A spokesperson for Marshall said this engagement did not represent his views.
The direction of his media companies has followed this rightward shift. Under Marshall’s ownership, GB News has become virtually the mouthpiece for the right-wing, pro-Brexit Reform UK party.
Party leader Nigel Farage has an hour-long prime time slot Monday to Thursday, netting him, almost a million pounds a year. Farage says this figure is exaggerated, but by his own financial declarations he is the highest paid of all MPs.
Apart from the string of Reform politicians being given airtime, my recent research has revealed how GB News shifted during the recent election campaign from being pro-Tory to pro-Reform.
I monitored the content posted to the GB News website in the months ahead of the election. My analysis found that as the election drew nearer, the share of pro-Tory items declined from 25% to less than half of that.
But in the last week of June, following Farage’s announcement that he was running as a Reform candidate, the number of pro-Reform items consisted of 17% of its coverage (compared with just 7% over the previous three months). Anti-Conservative coverage was up to 10%, level-pegging with Labour.
What then, of the Spectator’s future trajectory? Perhaps one straw in the wind is that, despite Marshall’s assurances that the magazine’s editorial line would remain untouched, Andrew Neil, who chaired the magazine for 20 years and kept it as a Conservative-supporting publication, stepped down following Marshall’s purchase.
He tweeted: “I regarded it as my prime responsibility for 20 years to ensure [editorial independence] not just from outside pressures, commercial or political, but even from proprietors … I cannot tell if the new owners will have the same reverence for editorial independence.”
Neil’s replacement, Freddie Sayers, has been editing UnHerd, where the political line, while generally right-of-centre, has not been consistently pro-Conservative.
Hence, there is the possibility that, if Marshall is successful in his bid for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the right-wing bias of the UK’s print media will remain, but not necessarily to the benefit for the currently flailing Conservative Party.
Ivor Gaber is Professor of Journalism, University of Sussex. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Conservative media titan Rupert Murdoch is making news again – this time, with a secretive effort to change an irrevocable trust. That trust has important ownership interests in both Fox Corp. and News Corp., so it affects broadcast news as well as The Wall Street Journal and other publications.
Under the current terms of the trust, upon Murdoch’s death, his four oldest children – Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence – will have “an equal voice” in determining the future of the news empire.
But as The New York Times recently reported, the 93-year-old Murdoch has been trying to alter the trust to ensure his oldest son, Lachlan, stays in charge of his media properties. The legal dispute played out behind closed doors for months, and it might have stayed there if the Times hadn’t obtained a sealed court document shedding light on the conflict.
Murdoch is calling his efforts to change the terms Project Harmony, reportedly out of the belief that doing so would head off any intrafamily wrangling.
The effort to change the trust is so secretive that a spokesperson for the Nevada probate court where the proceedings are occurring stated that all information related to the case is confidential, based on a court order.
As law professors who teach trusts and estates, we are intrigued by the publicity surrounding a somewhat obscure method for holding property. Trusts are private documents that don’t get filed in court unless there’s a dispute.
All about trusts
Trusts are an estate planning technique for giving away property. In our law classes on trusts and estates, we explain how they can be useful for minimising estate taxes, protecting assets, making charitable contributions, avoiding probate and, in certain circumstances, qualifying for government benefits.
Unlike making an outright gift and transferring full ownership to someone else, the donor of a trust – called a “settlor” – transfers legal control of the gifted property into the trust.
The people who hold the legal title to the property in the trust are called “trustees.” They manage the property and make decisions about how and when to distribute funds to the beneficiaries, who are the actual recipients of trust property.
Trustees are fiduciaries, which means they are under strict legal requirements to manage the property in the sole interests of the beneficiaries. If the property in a trust includes shares in a business, then trustees have the power to exercise any voting rights for those shares.
Trusts allow donors to prolong their control over their property by appointing trustees to carry out their objectives after they die or become incapacitated. Trusts are useful when giving away complex business interests that require extensive supervision and sophisticated decision-making, all of which can be administered by trustees according to the settlor’s preferences stated in the trust.
The view from Nevada
In Nevada, where the Murdoch case is playing out, a settlor can’t unilaterally change any trust’s terms unless the trust itself specifically reserves the right to do so. In other words, trusts are presumed to be irrevocable, or irreversible.
But even when a trust is irrevocable, there are still ways to change its terms.
In any state, including Nevada, irrevocable trusts can be altered by court order if the settlor and all beneficiaries agree to the modification. In some cases, trusts can also be modified without court approval through a process known as “trust decanting,” which can be performed by the trustee without the consent of settlors or beneficiaries.
Nevada is unusually permissive in allowing settlors to maintain secrecy about the trust, even with respect to trust beneficiaries. In most states, trust beneficiaries have much broader rights to receive financial information about the trust.
Nevada also explicitly protects confidentiality in trust proceedings by law, even without a court order. Indeed, having reviewed thousands of trust cases from courts around the country, we find Nevada to be especially protective of the donor’s interests. That may be one reason the Murdoch Family Trust is located there.
The stakes of the dispute
The Murdoch Family Trust holds a variety of types of property, including a family farm in Melbourne, Australia; the Murdoch art collection; and shares in Disney, News Corp. and Fox. The property in the trust is managed by a corporate trustee, Cruden Financial Services.
The trust terms at the center of this dispute appear to stem from Murdoch’s 1999 divorce from his second wife, Anna. She negotiated an agreement to ensure that their three joint children – Lachlan, James and Elisabeth – along with Prudence, Murdoch’s daughter from an earlier marriage, would inherit News Corp.
The trust document sets out what will happen to ownership of the media assets upon Murdoch’s death: His voting share will be transferred to the four oldest children. That could lead to a scenario in which the children are fighting over the future of the media assets. Fear of that outcome seems to have motivated Rupert Murdoch to seek this change to the trust.
Although Lachlan is now the chair of News Corp. and executive chair and CEO of Fox Corporation, the children have already aired some of their disagreements over the political direction of the media companies. For example, James and his wife have criticized Fox’s move to the right. Murdoch may well see this as a threat to the company’s business model, which caters to a conservative audience.
Even though Murdoch’s trust is irrevocable, it reportedly “contains a narrow provision allowing for changes done in good faith and with the sole purpose of benefiting all of its members.” Rupert Murdoch’s argument is that by taking away governance rights from James, Elisabeth and Prudence, Lachlan will be able to manage the family business more profitably, thereby increasing the value of trust assets for all beneficiaries.
Because some of Murdoch’s children object to his proposed governance changes, Murdoch appears to be relying on the power he retained as settlor to modify the trust in good faith for the beneficiaries’ benefit.
A court will decide later this year whether the changes really are in good faith; If so, then Murdoch will be able to change the trust as he would like so that Lachlan can continue to control the family business.
The saga shows the ways that trusts can protect a family business. But when the next generation lacks a shared vision for the future of that business, even irrevocable trusts can’t ensure family harmony.
Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia and Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
When businesspeople retire at an advanced age, it seldom makes headlines.
But when 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced in September that he was stepping away from his multicontinent media empire and turning it over to his son Lachlan, it was breaking news that generated countless stories speculating about the futures of two of his most storied holdings, Fox and News Corp.
As a scholar who studies media organizations and their political and economic influence, I see this level of attention as an indicator both of the significance of the companies Murdoch built and the way he used them to alter the media and political landscape.
Murdoch the believer … or opportunist?
Murdoch infused his print and television properties, first in his native Australia and later in the U.K. and the U.S., with a generally right-of-center slant.
But his reputation as a promoter of conservative ideals was at odds with his past. While a student at Oxford University, Murdoch kept a bust of Lenin in his room and annoyed his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, with his socialist views.
When his father died suddenly in 1952, Murdoch inherited a small newspaper in Adelaide and soon was using its profits to buy up suburban papers all over Australia, as well as licenses for television stations.
His conquest of the U.K. began in 1969 with the purchase of a majority interest in News of the World, a major circulation Sunday tabloid. Eventually, he would add to it the daily tabloid The Sun and the redoubtable but financially struggling Times and Sunday Times.
Through the 1970s, his politics moved to the right, culminating in his support – and The Sun’s much sought-after editorial endorsement – of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party.
Despite the conservative outlook of his publications, there always has been nagging speculation about the sincerity of Murdoch’s ideological beliefs – whether they were tightly held or simply manifestations of political opportunism and his ability to anticipate the popular mood. Murdoch’s The Sun backed the center-left Tony Blair when Conservative Party prime minister John Major fell out of favor in 1997.
His successes in the U.K. provided him with the strategic template for his eventual entry into the more lucrative U.S. market: Buy undervalued sources of content creation and then use their profits, along with a combination of emerging technology and political influence, to expand their distribution.
In the U.K., that meant the secretive construction of a high-tech automated printing facility that bypassed the labor unions. In the U.S., it might have contributed to a US$4.5 million book deal for House Speaker Newt Gingrich with Murdoch’s publishing house HarperCollins. It came as the media tycoon was facing questions about where the money for his U.S. television properties was coming from – questions, it was suggested by critics, that the speaker’s influence could help smooth over.
Building an American empire
Murdoch’s American empire started in 1976 when he purchased the tabloid the New York Post. There, borrowing from his experience in the U.K., he flipped the newspaper’s ideology from liberal to conservative and used splash headlines and prurient content to more than double its circulation.
Also echoing a strategy he had employed in the U.K., he added the more respected Wall Street Journal to his holdings a number of years later, extending the reach of his influence from blue-collar to white-collar readers.
Anticipating the uncertain future of the newspaper business, Murdoch expanded his empire to include television.
He purchased the Twentieth Century Fox film and television studio in 1985 to provide both production facilities and a library of content. The following year, he bought the television station holdings of Metromedia to form the distribution nucleus of what would become the Fox television network.
Doing so required a series of moves to meet Federal Communications Commission regulations. First, Murdoch would have to become a U.S. citizen. Second, Fox would have to limit its hours of broadcast in order to avoid meeting the official definition of a network and in so doing break FCC rules that at the time stated that a single company could not be both a network and a syndicator of programs.
Third, he would have to sell the New York Post, since another rule prohibited common ownership of a daily newspaper and television station in the same city. The FCC would later allow him to repurchase the Post out of bankruptcy in 1993, rather than see the newspaper fold.
The birth of Fox News
Unable to secure licenses for terrestrial television stations in the U.K., Murdoch launched the Sky satellite service in 1989 as both a content provider and a distribution system. Among Sky’s channels was Sky News, the U.K.’s first 24-hour news channel. Once Sky News had become profitable, Murdoch announced he would bring his brand of 24-hour news to the U.S. By October 1996, Fox News Channel, led by former Republican Party strategist Roger Ailes, was on the air.
While Fox News is now very much associated with a viewership that skews older, conservative and white, the Fox broadcast network’s path to success with audiences and advertisers was initially based in its appeal to underserved audiences among young adults and African Americans.
Shows like “The Simpsons” and “Married … With Children” were seen as edgy in their representation of dysfunctional families. Meanwhile, “In Living Color,” “Roc,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” “Martin” and “Living Single” followed “The Cosby Show” playbook of focusing on Black authorship and autobiography to attract not just African Americans but audiences of all races and ethnicities.
When Fox secured rights to the National Football League’s NFC games in 1993, the network began targeting more mainstream audiences as well. As he had done in the newspaper business, Murdoch established his foothold in a niche market he perceived as being underserved and ripe for exploitation before setting his sights elsewhere.
A less-than-graceful exit
Despite his reputation as a buccaneer who took huge risks in expanding his holdings, skirting regulations and delaying repayments of loans from financial institutions, Murdoch avoided major legal and business setbacks for most of his career.
That only began to change in the mid-2000s.
First there was Myspace. News Corp. bought what was then among the world’s most popular websites in 2005. But it soon went into decline, weighed down by failures to update its technology and features. Then, in 2011, a backlash from a scandal involving the hacking of cellphone accounts of a murdered teenage girl, British service personnel killed in action and a host of celebrities forced the closure of Murdoch’s first U.K. newspaper, the News of the World.
More recently, News Corp. settled a lawsuit brought by the parents of the late Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, after Fox News repeated right-wing conspiracy claims about the murdered man. It also reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which several Fox News hosts had accused of rigging the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. A similar defamation suit by Smartmatic is pending.
For a man whose career was built on a shrewdness for reading the media landscape, such failures might well leave a bitter taste in retirement. But nonetheless, Murdoch will step down from his empire leaving mighty footprints.
It remains to be seen how his son Lachlan will fill them – or if he also inherited his father’s instincts and will lay down tracks for the empire in a new and unexpected direction.
Bruce Drushel, Professor of Media, Journalism and Film, Miami University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Rupert Murdoch. Photograph by David Shankbone. Published under Creative Commons Licence
On Thursday, September 21, following career that began nearly 70 years ago in 1954, Fox Corporation and News Corporation announced that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of each board effective as of the upcoming Annual General Meeting of shareholders of each company in mid-November 2023. Murdoch will be appointed Chairman Emeritus of each company. Following the Annual General Meetings, Lachlan Murdoch will become sole Chair of News Corp and continue as Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Fox Corporation. “On behalf of the FOX and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch. “We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted.” We present here a feature republished from The Conversation
By Simon Potter
Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has announced his retirement as chairman of Fox and News Corp, making way for his son Lachlan. He has been demonised as a puppet master who would pull the strings of politicians behind the scenes, as a man with too much power. But what influence did he and his fellow media moguls really wield?
The day after the 1992 UK general election, Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun claimed credit for the Tory victory with the notorious headline “It Was The Sun What Won it”. Murdoch subsequently denied he had such influence.
But in 1995, and with another general election on the horizon, Labour leader Tony Blair certainly thought it was worth courting the media mogul. Blair, along with his chief press secretary Alistair Campbell, travelled to Hayman Island, Australia, to address a News Corp. conference. Two years later The Sun turned its back on the Conservatives and backed New Labour, which emerged victorious from that year’s general election.
Commentators have argued that Murdoch’s US media empire, notably Fox News, gave Donald Trump significant public support in his quest for presidential power. Although Murdoch now seems to have gone cold on Trump, his latest biography quotes the tycoon’s ex-wife Jerry Hall as telling him: “You helped make him president.”
More than a century ago, commentators were worrying about the power of the “press barons”. The archetype of this malign figure was Lord Northcliffe, who as Winston Churchill put it, “felt himself to be possessed of formidable power” after helping to unseat a prime minister and install the next one. According to Churchill, “armed with the solemn prestige of The Times in one hand and the ubiquity of the Daily Mail in the other”, during the first world war Northcliffe “aspired to exercise a commanding influence on events”.
Of course, the media landscape has changed dramatically since then. Indeed, it has even been transformed in the years since The Sun’s political interventions of the 1990s. Today’s press barons have had to come to terms with a digital revolution which has uprooted the traditional business model of newspapers: readership has declined and advertising revenues have collapsed, hoovered up by tech giants such as Google and Meta. Local newspapers have borne the brunt of the financial damage caused by this and by collapsing print sales, but national newspapers have struggled too.
Front pages of The Sun backing – and mocking – different political leaders. wikipedia
One good example is the Telegraph Media Group: bought by the Barclay Brothers for £665m in 2004, but valued at just £200m by 2019. The group is now up for sale again.
Meanwhile “alt truthers”, like Russell Brand, amass huge followings on social media while railing against a “media elite” that seems to include most of the traditional newspaper press.
As the 2024 election looms, it is timely to consider how the power and influence of newspapers – and newspaper owners – has waxed and waned, and to ask what this history might tell us about the state of the press and public life in the UK today.
A ‘free press’ is born
By the middle of the 19th century, the British newspaper industry was one of the most diverse and sophisticated in the world. Campaigners had, over the previous decades, successfully lobbied to see the dismantling of government restrictions and taxes on the press. Britain now had a “free press”, with no prior censorship of what could be printed and an essentially free market with little state regulation. Campaigners hoped this would usher in a period of democratic political expression in print. The free market would supposedly give everyone a voice, allowing a multiplicity of viewpoints to be published each day.
For a fleeting moment, this seemed to be borne out in an immediate flourishing of new titles. In the six years after the 1855 repeal of the newspaper stamp duty, 492 new newspapers were established, many of them in provincial towns and cities which had never previously had their own newspapers. The reforming Manchester Liberal MP John Bright applauded the “great revolution of opinion on many public questions” that was taking place thanks to “the freedom of the newspaper press”.
However, many of the new titles quickly went to the wall and during the later 19th century a very different type of newspaper industry emerged. A new generation of entrepreneurs realised that they could benefit financially from market opportunities by applying novel technologies and techniques to newspaper production and distribution.
Recently constructed national and international telegraph networks allowed them to bring in the latest news from around the country, and around the world, scooping their rivals. Steam engines could be used to power printing presses, allowing them to print vast numbers of newspapers quickly enough to sell them the same day. And steam trains provided a way to get those newspapers to readers across the country using the new rail network. Fleet Street became the centre of a truly national industry.
Edward Levy (later Levy-Lawson) led the way. From 1855 he owned The Daily Telegraph: the name of the paper was itself a reference to the new technologies being deployed in the newspaper industry.
Edward Levy Lawson 1st Baron Burnham. Image taken in the early 1900s. NPG, CC BY-NC
Levy-Lawson’s Telegraph combined serious, up-to-date news reporting with American-style journalistic innovations, including lurid crime reporting, plenty of sports coverage and publicity stunts, such as backing H. M. Stanley’s 1874 expedition across Africa on the Congo River.
The purpose of all this was to sell more newspapers. By 1877, the Telegraph’s circulation approached 250,000 – the highest daily sales figure for any newspaper anywhere in the world.
Levy-Lawson saw newspapers primarily as a business, not as a route to political influence or social advancement. Although he was made Lord Burnham in 1903, the established elite looked down on his commercial origins. That snobbery was reinforced by antisemitic prejudice. The most disgusting public attacks on Levy-Lawson came from Henry Labouchere, editor of a newspaper called Truth, who raved against the influence of “Hebrew barons” on British public life.
Levy-Lawson established a template for a new type of press proprietor who was, first and foremost, a businessman. These entrepreneurs formed public companies to raise the vast sums of capital required to build their newspaper empires. They priced their newspapers aggressively low to attract the largest possible readership.
As a result, sales revenue fell well below enormous running costs. They made up the shortfall by raking in money from advertisers attracted by the large circulations and national reach of their papers. The battle was now for scale. Each press baron wanted to control the biggest possible newspaper empire.
The Napoleon of Fleet Street
By the late 19th century, a fortune could be made from owning newspapers. Alfred Harmsworth came from a modest background but built up a stable of publications aimed at entertaining, amusing and interesting the enormous new literate public created by Victorian universal primary education and rapid urbanisation.
Harmsworth used a range of eye-catching schemes to publicise his papers, including a competition that awarded the winner a pound a week for the rest of their life. By 1894, his newspapers and periodicals had a combined circulation of almost two million, constituting the world’s largest publishing business.
Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe in 1896, the year he launched The Daily Mail. NPG, CC BY-NC
In 1896 Harmsworth launched the Daily Mail, a daily paper selling for a halfpenny. It targeted an aspirational lower-middle-class national readership, made up of women as well as men – an attractive demographic for advertisers. The paper was to contain everything that could be expected from a “serious” daily, presented in a respectable-looking package, but with more life, human interest and entertainment.
Content was condensed into short articles, presented in a punchy, accessible style, aimed at the new breed of office workers and commuters. Harmsworth’s brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere) ran the commercial side of the business on efficient, industrial lines.
In 1905, Harmsworth was made Lord Northcliffe. He chose this title in part because it allowed him, half-jokingly, to initial his correspondence “N”, in the style of Napoleon. He became infamous for his dictatorial, erratic, pedantic, obsessive and abusive management style. He would sometimes appoint two people to the same post and make them compete with one another to keep their job. Employees faced lavish rewards, alternating with frequent threats of dismissal. Fleet Street journalists warned prospective job applicants that Northcliffe would “suck out your brains, then sack you”.
Northcliffe cultivated informers in the Daily Mail office to tell him what was going on behind the scenes and to monitor private telephone conversations. He liked his staff to be his “creatures”. A later newspaper editor thought that there was “something more than a little nauseating about his relations with many of his chief associates; one wonders how they could stomach the humiliations he imposed and retain their self-respect.”
The political elite, and many journalists, looked down on Northcliffe and his popular papers. Lord Salisbury famously dismissed the Mail as being produced “by officeboys for officeboys”. Northcliffe’s former employee, E.T. Raymond, thought that the press baron had “an uncanny way of arriving at the results of thought without thought itself”. Another contemporary described Northcliffe as “brainless, formless, familiar and impudent”.
Northcliffe’s purchase of The Times in 1908 marked an attempt to expand his political influence, but some contemporaries still doubted whether he was very important. Lord Esher remarked that “he evidently loves power, but his education is defective, and he has no idea to what uses power can be put”. Many of Northcliffe’s press crusades seemed harmlessly apolitical, such as his campaigns to promote the consumption of wholemeal bread or to grow better sweet-peas.
However, others worried about the consequences of allowing a small number of very rich men, running enormous corporate conglomerates, to dominate the British newspaper industry. The writer and journalist R. A. Scott-James lamented in 1913 that “privilege” now dominated public debate, and that the press had become “a vehicle for false notions and antisocial ideas”.
The writer Norman Angell (a former Northcliffe employee who subsequently became a Nobel-prize-winning peace activist) similarly argued that the “modern industrialised Press” had become the most powerful instrument for the “capture of the mind by our industrial aristocracy”. Newspapers, Angell claimed, now worked to “exploit human weaknesses” for the purpose of profit, corrupting public debate.
Press, politics and the first world war
Concern about the power of press barons grew exponentially during WWI. From 1914, Northcliffe used his newspapers constantly to critique the Liberal government’s coordination of the war effort. His main targets were Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and the secretary of state for war, Lord Kitchener. In 1915, Northcliffe accused Kitchener, in print, of failing to supply the army with enough high explosive artillery shells. Initially, this made the Mail unpopular. Circulation dropped dramatically and the paper was ceremonially burned on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.
However, as its claims about government mismanagement began to seem justified, the Mail’s popularity recovered. The “shell scandal” contributed to the fall of the Liberal government and the establishment of a reconstituted coalition under Asquith’s leadership.
The ambitious Liberal politician David Lloyd George worked closely with Northcliffe in order to further his own career and Lloyd George was rewarded when he was made Minister of Munitions in the wake of the shell scandal.
But Northcliffe’s criticism of the government continued and Cabinet members worried that German propagandists were exploiting his public attacks on the British war efforts to undermine morale. Northcliffe’s campaigning finally helped precipitate the resignation of Asquith in December 1916. The Daily News (a national newspaper founded in 1846 by none other than Charles Dickens) branded Northcliffe a “press dictator” for his role in the prime minister’s downfall.
Northcliffe’s ally Lloyd George took Asquith’s place as prime minister. However, Lloyd George now cannily kept the press baron at arm’s length, giving him relatively minor official jobs that came with little power while making it difficult for him to attack a government with which he was now identified. At the end of the war, Lloyd George finally broke openly with Northcliffe, attacking the press baron in a vitriolic speech delivered in the House of Commons. Northcliffe was deluded, Lloyd George suggested, in thinking that as part of his “great task of saving the world” he had the right to dictate the terms of the 1919 peace settlement with Germany. Lloyd George spoke of Northcliffe’s “diseased vanity” and tapped his own forehead meaningfully as he delivered the speech to the assembled MPs.
By this point Northcliffe had become a serious liability to Lloyd George, and was indeed ill, both physically and mentally. His behaviour had become more erratic and aggressive than ever, and his language increasingly foul and paranoid. At one point he was reported to have brandished a revolver at his doctor.
Northcliffe died in 1922 leaving no legitimate heirs, although he had had several mistresses and two secret families. Management of his media empire passed to his brother, Lord Rothermere, who sold The Times and went on to expand in more profitable directions, conducting vicious commercial warfare against his rivals. Rothermere later became a prominent public supporter of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and an admirer and personal acquaintance of Hitler.
The rise of Beaverbrook
The first world war also saw the rise to prominence of another archetypal press baron, Max Aitken. Like Northcliffe, Aitken came from a humble background. He was born in Ontario, raised in New Brunswick, and made his fortune through somewhat dubious Canadian business dealings. He came to England in 1910, forged new political connections and was elected as a Conservative MP.
By the end of 1916 Aitken had purchased a controlling interest in the Daily Express, the main rival to the Daily Mail. He was involved in the behind-the-scenes political intrigue that toppled Asquith as prime minister and brought Lloyd George to power that year, though his exact role was never made clear. Lloyd George treated Aitken more generously than he had Northcliffe: Aitken was made Lord Beaverbrook and in 1918 was appointed minister of information, taking charge of British wartime propaganda and entering the cabinet.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Beaverbrook turned the Daily Express into the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK. The paper adopted an aspirational, aggressive, populist tone to appeal to a broad audience and maximise advertising revenue. Beaverbrook used the Express to support his political allies, and to attack enemies like the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin.
Following the Wall Street Crash, Beaverbrook launched his “Empire Crusade” in the Express, seeking to turn the British empire into a tariff-protected economic union (a little like an English-speaking version of the later European Union). This campaign, also supported by Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail, constituted a further direct threat to the leadership of Baldwin, now prime minister.
In a speech in parliament, Baldwin famously used words provided by his cousin Rudyard Kipling to castigate Rothermere and Beaverbrook. He argued that by weaponising “direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths” the press barons aimed at “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.
Baldwin eventually defeated Beaverbrook’s crusade, but the press baron continued to prosecute his personal vendetta. In supporting the embattled Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936, Beaverbrook admitted in private that his main aim was to “bugger Baldwin”.
Conrad Black – the ‘moneylogue’
Half a century later another wealthy Canadian, Conrad Black, used his fortune to build his own press empire. Black inherited substantial Canadian business holdings from his father, which he refocused on newspaper ownership. During the 1980s and 1990s he built up a vast portfolio of media investments in north America, the UK, Israel and Australia. In Britain, his key possession was the Telegraph Group.
Unlike some other notable press barons, Black revelled in the glamorous lifestyle that his wealth brought him. Newspapers were, for him, partly a status symbol. “The deferences (sic) and preferments” that the UK’s political culture “bestows upon the owners of great newspapers are satisfying,” as he once put it. But his press investments also helped fund his lavish spending. By the early 1990s, The Daily Telegraph was generating substantial profits and supporting Black’s other businesses interests.
Max Hastings, editor of The Daily Telegraph between 1986 and 1995, concluded from his time working for Black that it was, at root, all about the money.
Whatever the professed convictions of proprietors, most are moneylogues rather than ideologues. Their decisions are driven by commercial imperatives. Stripped of their own rhetoric, the political convictions of most British proprietors throughout history add up to an uncomplicated desire to make the world a safe place for rich men to live in.
True to form, Black anticipated the coming slump in the newspaper industry and sold off many of his press interests while their value was still high, including the Telegraph Group in 2004.
In 2007, Black was sentenced for fraud in the US and served 37 months in prison. In 2019, US President Donald Trump granted him a full pardon. The previous year Black had published a flattering biography: Donald J. Trump: a President Like No Other. Commentators were left to draw their own conclusions.
Enter the ‘Dirty Digger’
The preeminent press baron of our time has, of course, been Rupert Murdoch, who from the 1960s extended his Australian newspaper empire to the UK (buying The Sun and The News of the World in 1968 and The Times in 1981). From the 1970s he also made inroads into the US newspaper industry.
Murdoch established a reputation for selling newspapers using previously unacceptable levels of sensationalism and sex (Private Eye magazine labelled him the “Dirty Digger”). He later bought into the global film and television industry, building a US$17bn (about £14bn) fortune and establishing a reputation for meddling in politics around the world.
Biographer Michael Wolff has suggested that Murdoch does not greatly value his personal wealth or relationships, writing: “Working isn’t the means to an end; it’s the end. It’s one man’s war – a relentless, nasty, inch-by-inch campaign.”
According to Wolff, what Murdoch loves is playing the game of high-stakes business, being in the room where it happens, doing the deal, owning more newspapers, and destroying his rivals. He enjoys gossip and gathering information about those with political power, using it to protect his commercial interests and to support the political agendas of those he favours. Beneficiaries have included Margaret Thatcher, Blair and Trump.
In running his media concerns, like Northcliffe and Beaverbrook before him, Murdoch is aggressive, interventionist and hands-on. Wolff claims that Murdoch did not want his employees to be partners but would rather they serve him as subordinates, and so surrounds himself with sycophants. He is seemingly willing to accept short-term financial losses to secure long-term market dominance. This approach is rooted in the golden age of the press barons, when the dominant business strategy was to take over or shut down the competition, allowing the victor to rake in windfall profits unopposed.
Perhaps this strategy still makes sense: as the profits made by traditional newspapers dwindle, the remaining rewards might go to the last man standing.
Murdoch’s media empire has endured its periods of commercial crisis. The disastrous failures of journalistic ethics at the News of the World embroiled the newspaper in the phone hacking scandal and the paper was closed down by Murdoch in 2011. In the US in 2023, Fox News settled a lawsuit over on-air accusations concerning the role of voting machines during the US elections of 2020, costing the network almost US$800m (£650m).
However, other elements in Murdoch’s empire continue to produce a profit. After an initial near-disaster, Murdoch’s takeover of The Wall Street Journal has proved a financial success. He paid US$5.6bn (about £4.4bn) for it in 2007. Now thanks to a stunningly successful drive for subscribers (3.78m of them, 84% digital-only) the paper is worth around US$10bn (£8bn). In the UK, successful management of the digital transformation has similarly meant that The Times and The Sunday Times have gone from a £70m annual loss in 2009 to a £73m profit in 2022.
Press barons of the future
The figure of the press baron has recently found a new fictional archetype in Logan Roy, the dark heart of HBO’s series Succession. Roy has a number of reasons for wanting to own newspapers and other media outlets. Primarily, he simply needs to acquire more stuff, compulsively buying new titles to build an empire capable of eradicating all challengers.
Like Murdoch, expansion – doing the deal – is for Roy a reward in and of itself. He also loves the influence his media interests bring and wants to dominate those with political power, partly to protect his business, but largely because he craves control. The wealth and the lifestyle that accompany his media empire, in contrast, seem to give him little pleasure.
Succession reflects continuing concerns about who owns the media, how they make their money, and what they want to get out of their media outlets. As the show’s British writer, Jesse Armstrong, reflected:
The Sun doesn’t run the UK, nor does Fox entirely set the media agenda in the US, but it was hard not to feel, at the time the show was coming together, the particular impact of one man, of one family, on the lives of so many.
But does the press still have such influence over politics and public life? The many challenges facing traditional newspapers do seem to threaten their historical role. The UK’s newspaper industry has been rocked by scandals about phone hacking, professional ethics and behind-the-scenes links between journalists, politicians and the police.
And then there is the declining readership and advertising revenue. In 2019, a somewhat uninspired official report on the future of British journalism summarised some of the challenges, but offered few meaningful solutions. That was the same year the Telegraph Media Group was valued at just £200m.
London’s Evening Standard is meanwhile facing an annual loss of £16m, and relies on loans from its Russian-British proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, to stay afloat. The same Lebedev who was controversially given a peerage in 2020 by then prime minister, Boris Johnson.
Newspapers are also in danger of being dismissed as “mainstream” or “legacy” media: old-fashioned, obsolete and unable to counter the mendacities and conspiracy theories of online “alt truthers”. Recently, following allegations presented in newspapers and on television, the comedian Russell Brand immediately sought to discredit “coordinated media attacks” which he claimed served some shadowy hidden agenda.
Meanwhile, as their own profits dwindle and they lay off more journalists, the capacity of newspapers to investigate public lies and misdeeds is drastically reduced. Some worry that the newspapers themselves are having a damaging effect on public debate – apparent, for example, in the polarising and sometimes inaccurate press coverage and comment that accompanied the Brexit referendum and its aftermath. Fuelling culture wars, rather than mounting an informed defence against them, seems to be a key tactic in staying afloat for some titles.
Yet the reasons why press barons want to own newspapers remain much the same today as they did for Northcliffe, Beaverbrook, and Black: making money, securing a place in the national (or global) economic and social elite, generating political influence, and delivering the thrill of the great corporate deal.
And the old media dynasties endure: in 2022 the 4th Lord Rothermere, great-grandson of the Daily Mail’s co-founder, took the Daily Mail & General Trust group out of public ownership, and became its chief executive.
Above all else, traditional newspaper titles retain their appeal to potential owners because, in a crowded marketplace for online news, they can represent a trusted and prestigious brand. The fate of Buzzfeed has demonstrated the difficulties of creating a viable online presence without such an established base.
Traditional newspapers will continue to scale back print runs over the coming years. Probably, at some point, they will just stop printing newspapers. But some of these companies will live on as profitable online brands.
In a post-Murdoch age, future press barons – digital media emperors – will want to invest in these brands because they offer recognition and respectability, following the early example set by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who purchased The Washington Post in 2013.
Potential buyers for the Telegraph Media Group take in UK businesses, including the Mail’s Rothermere and the owner of the rightwing GB News. But there is also interest from Europe and the US, as well as the Gulf states. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Barclay family has itself assembled a portfolio of potential Middle Eastern finance to try to buy the business back from Lloyds.
Some of these international players may see the Telegraph Group as offering a respectable voice in the British media landscape and a route to political and popular influence, something that only a traditional newspaper business can provide. And they are no doubt interested in the brand’s asset of nearly one million subscribers, many of them digital – data being the be all and end all in today’s market.
Whichever way that sale goes, we are still a long way from the dream of a democratic utopia promoted by 19th-century campaigners for press freedom. They believed that the free market would liberate the press and, by doing so, liberate us all. Sadly, it seems like Logan Roy was closer to the truth when he said to his wannabe successors: “Money wins. Here’s to us.”
Simon Potter is Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
Cecil Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/Wikimedia Commons
By Rodney Tiffen
Nearly every biographical commentary on Rupert Murdoch notes how he began with a modest inheritance in Adelaide, principally an afternoon newspaper, and built it into a global multimedia empire. Walter Marsh’s book Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire has the distinctive strength of knowing Adelaide much better than any other Murdoch watcher, and studying Murdoch’s Adelaide period in more depth than anyone else.
Rupert’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch, was the most famous Australian newspaperman of his generation. As the dominant figure in the Herald & Weekly Times group for over two decades, he built the country’s first newspaper empire.
But he increasingly resented the chasm between being a shareholder and an employee, no matter how well rewarded. He was determined to leave his son Rupert a tangible inheritance. In the last years of his life, he sought to build his own independent newspaper empire in ways that were far from being in the best interests of the Herald & Weekly Times.
Sally Young’s recently published Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires gives a very good account of Keith’s machinations. Rupert would never have allowed any employee of his to behave in the way Keith did.
A great fight
Rupert Murdoch’s father Sir Keith Murdoch (1885-1952). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
After all Keith’s efforts, once the personal debts and death duties were paid, Rupert’s inheritance essentially came down to the Adelaide News. Editing the Adelaide News was Rohan Rivett, Keith’s trusted confidante and Rupert’s mentor and friend from his Oxford days.
Rivett was a distinguished journalist, who had recorded his experiences as a prisoner of war in Behind Bamboo, the bestselling Australian book on World War II. His political leanings were to the left. The Adelaide News was seen as bringing a refreshing degree of social and political liberalism to South Australia’s stuffy politics, although the paper rarely directly challenged the premier, Sir Thomas Playford, by far the longest reigning state premier in Australian history (1938-1965).
Almost immediately, the Herald & Weekly Times morning newspaper – the very establishment Advertiser – sought to drive News Limited out of business by starting a rival Sunday newspaper. Rivett and Rupert fought hard to survive. Not for the last time, Rupert relished the conflict. “It is going to be a great fight,” he told Rivett.
In a front page editorial, Murdoch and Rivett disclosed the behind the scenes actions of their rivals. After a couple of years, the two Sundays fought each other to a stalemate. In the subsequent agreement, in some ways News emerged the better. Rivett and Murdoch had won their first big challenge.
With this threat disposed of, Murdoch, now with the title “publisher”, began his expansion. He bought the Sunday Times in Perth, where free from Rivett’s presence he was more able to indulge his tabloid tastes.
He also successfully applied to get one of the first two commercial television licences in Adelaide, although his lobbying to make this a commercial monopoly service failed.
Marsh deftly documents how Murdoch’s views on the virtues of monopoly and competition varied to suit his immediate interests. Murdoch’s declaration, when he unsuccessfully applied for the first commercial television service in Perth, that he was not interested in building his empire, has not exactly stood the test of time.
Two episodes
The two episodes that later writers always mention about Murdoch’s Adelaide period are the News’ championing of the cause of Rupert Max Stuart, convicted for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, and his firing of Rivett.
Stuart was an itinerant Aboriginal labourer, illiterate, with limited English and prone to alcoholic binges. In December 1958, he was arrested near Ceduna and charged with the murder. The case for conviction rested principally on his confession.
With the threat of imminent execution hanging over him, Stuart had his cause taken up by Father Tom Dixon. A pamphlet by the historian Ken Inglis and coverage in the Adelaide News, driven by Rivett and supported by Murdoch, forced a new trial and then a Royal Commission.
The newspaper’s coverage of the Stuart case became politically controversial and the Playford government brought nine charges against it, including seditious libel. After a prolonged period of suspense, these charges were dismissed.
Putting to one side the drama, uncertainty and high emotion of the case, there are, in retrospect, three groups of opinion on Stuart’s conviction.
First, there are those who think he was guilty and the police and officialdom were essentially correct in everything they did. The second group consists of those who continued to believe in Stuart’s innocence, including Father Dixon and, years later, the investigative journalist Evan Whitton. The third group believed that the police grossly mistreated Stuart and fabricated the case against him, but that he was probably guilty.
Ken Inglis’s book concluded that the weight of the evidence tilted toward guilt rather than innocence. Decades later, Murdoch said:
There’s no doubt that Stuart didn’t get a totally fair trial, although it’s probable that he was guilty. I thought this at the time.
I think Murdoch is overstating the constancy of his opinion here. My guess is that, initially, when Rivett and Inglis took up the cause and later recruited Murdoch to it, they thought Stuart was innocent. After a searching cross-examination of Stuart at the Royal Commission, several of his previous supporters had their beliefs shaken.
The action that most showed Murdoch’s ruthlessness in these years was his sacking of Rivett in 1960. Rivett had been the editor of Adelaide News for eight and a half years. He had given the paper a much stronger financial basis, as well as higher standards of journalism. Before that, Rivett had helped Rupert through his years at Oxford. Relations were almost familial. They went on holiday together and Rupert often stayed with the Rivetts in London.
Despite the close and generally amicable relations between them, Murdoch fired Rivett without warning. Murdoch’s brief letter gave no reason for the dismissal and was never preceded or followed by any personal discussion between the two.
Murdoch later claimed that even after the trauma of the Royal Commission and libel trial, Rivett was being too provocative in his attitude to the Playford Government. Marsh notes that the last month of Rivett’s editorship gives no grounds for such a claim.
The timing, I think, was determined not by events in Adelaide, but by Murdoch’s bid for the Daily Mirror in Sydney. As Marsh points out, Rivett was a friend of the unions, and more inclined to be generous towards the journalists in his employ. Murdoch, with his eyes on Sydney and beyond, wanted his Adelaide assets to be a safe and regular cash cow to aid his ambitions for expansion elsewhere. A quiet, frugal editor was what he now required.
The unsentimental firing of Rivett showed that Murdoch was determined to be in sole charge and would pursue his interests ruthlessly.
Murdoch watchers will be also particularly interested in what other clues Young Rupert gives about its subject’s later behaviour. My suggestion comes in February 1956, when he was caught driving at at least double the speed limit on an Adelaide highway. After Murdoch made his excuses, the police allowed him to drive on, but almost immediately he started speeding again in a school zone, and the same police arrested him a second time.
Already, for this 24-year-old, rules were things that only applied to other people.
Rodney Tiffen is Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire – Walter Marsh is not yet available on Amazon India in paperback or hardcover. However, a Kindle edition is available at Rs 3269.25. Link
Headlines in early March 2023 implied Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch had made a damning confession. He had affirmed that some of his most important journalists were reporting that the 2020 presidential election was a fraud – even though they knew they were propagating a lie.
It was an admission during pretrial testimony in a libel lawsuit filed against Fox by a voting machine company that says it was defamed by the lie. For journalism practitioners and devotees, the admission should signal the end of the Fox News empire.
Nope. It didn’t.
Such a disgraceful demise would seem inevitable when journalists – professionally trained truth gatherers, employed by a news organisation, which is an institution that exists to provide truthful information – choose not to do so.
Nope.
That’s because a business that calls itself a news organization actually does not have to be one – but it does have to be a business. Businesses exist primarily to make a profit and doing actual news isn’t essential. Adam Serwer, reporting for The Atlantic, wrote “sources at Fox told me to think of it not as a network per se, but as a profit machine.”
News businesses or profit machines can hire anybody who falls off a turnip truck and label them journalists because the job has no standardised requirements.
The US Bureau of Labour Statistics lists “None” as requirements for work experience and on-the-job training for journalists but indicates a bachelor’s degree is typical. Accordingly, the Fox News business people could choose to spread election lies and insist, as court documents indicate, that it made good business sense to do so because much of their audience did not want the actual truth about that topic.
These are some of the troubling takeaways from Murdoch’s defence of his news business against a libel lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, the company implicated by Fox’s election fraud allegations. Fox essentially admits to publishing false information about Dominion, but argues it is nonetheless protected from liability. It is a defence grounded in the First Amendment, which protects press freedom so robustly that it also protects the irresponsible use of that freedom.
There’s lying … and there’s defamation
Murdoch’s admission was contained in court documents and was revealed in a New York Times story published on March 7, 2023. The story was about the US$1.6 billion libel lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion, the company Fox journalists repeatedly – and falsely – accused of rigging the 2020 presidential election to make sure Donald Trump lost.
Internal Fox communications, reported by the New York Times, revealed that network journalists and their news executive bosses knew the 2020 election was not fraudulent, yet continued to allow lies about the election – told by hosts and their guests – to be spread to the public.
Dominion claimed Fox’s audience recoiled when its journalists truthfully reported that Trump had lost the election. Dominion’s attorneys asserted that Fox feared the audience would switch their viewing allegiance to upstart conservative news organizations Newsmax and One America News.
In a March 31, 2023, ruling, the judge hearing the case cited examples of Fox’s internal communications that demonstrated how journalism values were supplanted by the language and values of business. Among them was this quote attributed to a Fox Corporation board member: “If ratings go down, revenue goes down.” The judge also referred to Dominion’s claim that Fox chose to publish the (false) statements to win back viewers.
Court documents show Dominion’s attorneys asked Murdoch: “What should the consequences be when Fox News executives knowingly allow lies to be broadcast?” Murdoch replied: “They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.”
That response aligns with principles widely touted by professional news organisations and established in the ethical practice of journalism. Although journalism scholars and practitioners vary in their definitions of what a news organization is and who can claim to be a journalist, there is firm agreement that reporting facts, or at least making a good faith effort to do so, is an indispensable mandate for both.
Yet Murdoch has not indicated an intention to discipline en masse Fox News employees who violated that ethical principle. Nor is he required to.
Even the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation’s foremost advocate for ethical journalism, rejects punishments for those who violate its principles. Its ethics code says in part: “The code is entirely voluntary. … It has no enforcement provisions or penalties for violations, and SPJ strongly discourages anyone from attempting to use it that way.” The organisation concedes that news outlets can discipline their own journalists. Because journalists and their employers may be considered to be one entity, any disciplinary action is voluntary self-discipline. Neither journalists nor the news organizations they personify have to be truthful unless they want to.
Lying in the press is unethical but does not necessarily strip liars of the protections provided by the First Amendment. There is an exception to this: the defamatory lie, one that injures a person or organisation’s reputation. That is what got Fox News sued.
Assumptions fall
Murdoch’s surprising statements were revealed in the lawsuit because his attorneys sought what’s called a “summary judgment” by the judge to decide the case without a trial, in order to avoid the prospect of facing a jury. That move makes sense given that some law scholars have found that juries rule against media defendants three times out of four.
By law, summary judgment is available only when the parties agree on the material facts of the case.
That meant Fox and Murdoch had to admit to Dominion’s most damning allegations, including confessing to broadcasting untrue statements and engaging in other unethical journalism practices. Even with those admissions, the First Amendment’s protection could still give Fox a chance to win the lawsuit – particularly if a jury did not hear the case.
Without reaching trial or a verdict, the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News lawsuit has already produced some unsettling results. It has challenged journalism disciples’ assumption that news organisations exist to provide the public with truthful information about the most important issues in their civic lives. It has shaken journalism’s faithful who assume that good journalism is never bad for the business of journalism.
Neither assumption is necessarily valid at Fox or anywhere. Anyone can claim to be a journalist, irrespective of their actual function. Any business can claim to be a news organisation. Functioning irresponsibly in either role is largely protected by the First Amendment and is therefore optional.
Ethics imposed by independent state bar associations and state medical boards have made professional attorneys and physicians accountable by law as a means of ensuring responsible behaviour in their roles, which are considered essential to society. Journalism ethics, which are news organisation ethics, are wholly voluntary and can be set aside if they compromise profits.
But if the ethics violations are defamatory, a successful libel lawsuit can impose accountability with a financial cost – money damages.
John C. Watson, is Associate Professor of Journalism, American University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
So the headline is that 21st Century Fox has  announced that its has entered into a definitive agreement to combine a part of its businesses with Disney that includes the film and television studios, cable entertainment networks and international TV businesses. The deal value: $52.4 Billion
The merger move is subject to customary conditions, including regulatory and shareholder approval. But as we have seen in the recent past, these could well be more than just a formality as we’ve seen in the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner.
It intends to spin off a portfolio of its news, sports and broadcast businesses to create a new “Fox,†which will be a growth company centered on live news and sports brands, anchored by the strength of the Fox Network. The new “Fox†will include Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Sports, Fox Television Stations Group, and sports cable networks FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes and Big Ten Network (BTN). It will also include the Company’s studio lot in Los Angeles and equity investment in Roku.
Combining with Disney are 21st Century Fox’s critically acclaimed film production businesses including Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000, which together offer diverse and compelling storytelling businesses and are the homes of Avatar, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool, as well as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Hidden Figures, Gone Girl, The Shape of Water, and The Martian – and its storied television creative units, Twentieth Century Fox Television, FX Productions and Fox21, who have brought The Americans, This Is Us, Modern Family, The Simpsons, and so many more hit TV series to viewers across the globe. Disney will also acquire FX Networks, Fox Sports Regional Networks, Fox Networks Group International, Star India, and 21st Century Fox’s interests in National Geographic Partners, Hulu, Sky, Tata Sky and Endemol Shine Group.  21st Century Fox remains committed to completing its proposed acquisition of the shares in Sky it does not own, and anticipates that the acquisition of Sky will close by June 30, 2018. Robert A. Iger will stay on as Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company till the end of calendar year 2021.
“The acquisition of this stellar collection of businesses from 21st Century Fox reflects the increasing consumer demand for a rich diversity of entertainment experiences that are more compelling, accessible and convenient than ever before,†said Robert A. Iger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company, adding: “We’re honored and grateful that Rupert Murdoch has entrusted us with the future of businesses he spent a lifetime building, and we’re excited about this extraordinary opportunity to significantly increase our portfolio of well-loved franchises and branded content to greatly enhance our growing direct-to-consumer offerings. The deal will also substantially expand our international reach, allowing us to offer world-class storytelling and innovative distribution platforms to more consumers in key markets around the world.â€
Added Rupert Murdoch, Executive Chairman of 21st Century Fox: “We are extremely proud of all that we have built at 21st Century Fox, and I firmly believe that this combination with Disney will unlock even more value for shareholders as the new Disney continues to set the pace in what is an exciting and dynamic industry.Furthermore, I’m convinced that this combination, under Bob Iger’s leadership, will be one of the greatest companies in the world. I’m grateful and encouraged that Bob has agreed to stay on, and is committed to succeeding with a combined team that is second to none.â€
It’s a piece of news that every Indian media and entertainment industry person will be proud of. Or envious of. 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Star India, and Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment empire has announced the elevation of Star India Chairman and CEO Uday Shankar to President, 21st Century Fox, Asia. It is effective immediately. Shankar will continue to lead Star India. This, it may be noted, is an additional responsibility.
It is interesting that the news comes even as discussions with Disney have reached a fairly advanced level for the sale 21CF (as 21st Century Fox is better known). In fact, according to some observers, the deal with Disney could well be inked before the year ends.
But there is more reason then this ‘Mere Bharatiya Mahaan’ sentiment. Shankar has possibly none of the makings of one of India’s Top 5 media conglomerates. He is an MPhil graduate from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He started out as a political journalist, worked in the print media for a bit and finally helming the editorial team at AajTak and Headlines Today. He was later appointed CEO and Editor of Media Content and Communications Services, the holding company of Star News (now ABP News).
And then, in a move that surprised many, except those who knew him very well, he was appointed CEO of Star India. The network was doing well, but staring at competition from existing networks and with two of its top executives launching general entertainment channels.
Shankar has been at the helm of Star India since October 2007 and has guided the transformation of Star into a diversified media company, leading initiatives in distribution through Media Pro, movies through Fox Studio, regional television through Asianet, and sports, following 21CF’s (then News Corp) acquisition of its joint venture with ESPN in 2012. His tenure has been marked by persistent leadership in television through innovative programming and investments in leading technologies, both of which have set the benchmark for the industry. So notes a 21CF communique. But we don’t need to be told that. The fact is that in the last decade-odd, Uday Shankar stands tallest amongst M&E professional captains and has led the organisation with entrepreneurial zeal.
He has also led industry associations and has ensured that it follows the path of professionalism. He has taken on the government and TRAI when he has needed to and been a strong ally of successive governments in its various programmes.
In his new role, Shankar will lead 21st Century Fox’s (21CF) video businesses across all of Asia, including Star India and Fox Networks Group, and work closely with 21CF leadership on key strategic initiatives in the region. He will continue to serve as Chairman and CEO for Star India, a key driver of 21CF’s growth and one of India’s largest media and entertainment companies, comprising 60-plus channels across entertainment and sports and eight languages, as well as leading digital video platform Hotstar.
Said 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch and CEO James Murdoch: “Uday’s new role will enhance our strategic focus across all of Asia and enable us to further capture opportunities, building on the transformation Star India has driven in our most important growth market. Under Uday’s leadership, our India business has firmly established itself as a world-class asset with durable businesses across entertainment, sports, satellite distribution and OTT. His strategic vision has put 21CF at the forefront of content and distribution in one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and we are very fortunate to benefit from Uday’s expanded leadership at a global level.â€
Zubin Gandevia, President of Fox Networks Group Asia (who old timers will remember for the cable business he ran in Mumbai), will continue to oversee video brands across 14 markets and now report to Shankar under this realigned regional structure. 21CF’s film business in Asia will continue to report directly to Stacey Snider, Chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox Film.
Meanwhile, for journalists across the country, whether they are from Patna or Pune, Mumbai or Meerut, the rise and rise of Uday Shankar speaks a lot for how hard (and smart) work always works. Even in the big, big world of media and entertainment.
A previous version of this story had an incorrect headline. Dunno how it happened, but it did. VIBGYOR-faced 🙁
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a roundtable meeting with top American CEOs from the media and entertainment sector. Â This happened last Thursday, September 24, to be precise.
The CEOs present included Rupert Murdoch, Executive Chairman, News Corp and 21stCentury Fox; James Murdoch, CEO, 21st Century Fox; Robert Thompson, CEO, News Corp; David Zaslav, President and CEO, Discovery Communications; Michael Lynton, CEO, Sony Entertainment; Michael Roth, CEO, Interpublic Group of Companies; Shane Smith, CEO, Vice Media; Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP; Jeff Bewkes, CEO, Time Warner; Nancy Dubuc, CEO, A&E Networks, Anthony Pratt, Chairman, Visy Industries; William Duhamel, Route One Investment Company; and Jeff Ubben, CEO, ValueAct Capital. Â Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India was the only Indian M&E CEO in the meeting.
According to a release, the CEOs appreciated the Prime Minister for energetic and dynamic leadership, and expressed optimism about the future of India. Specifically, the CEOs were enthusiastic about the digital transformation that is taking place in India through the Digital India initiative. They said that the current strong trajectory of the Indian economy makes it at a unique moment to accelerate growth in this sector. The CEOs called for speeding up of television digitisation and strengthening of the cellular (mobile) infrastructure.
The Prime Minister and CEOs observed that the changes in technology and media in recent times have led to an enormous democratisation of knowledge. The Prime Minister said that the world is now in a technology- driven era, where growth of digital infrastructure is as important as growth of physical infrastructure. He suggested to the CEOs that India represents both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge for them, and urged them to keep regional languages in mind, as they firm up investment plans for India. He spoke of his government’s vision to connect 600,000 villages through broadband connectivity. He asked CEOs to visualise the citizen of the 21st century, and think about what values s/he will represent and what challenges s/he will face. He also spoke of the role that digital technology can play in human resource development. The Prime Minister emphasised that he saw a key role for digital technology in further strengthening democracy, and in India’s development narrative.
Rupert Murdoch-owned Star Network has sold its entire shareholding of 25.99% in Ekta Kapoor promoted Balaji Telefilms in a block deal on the Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India (MSEI) at an average price of Rs 63.6 a share. This values the block deal at around Rs 108 crore.
“This confirms Star’s exit of a minority stake of 25.99% in Balaji Telefilms,†said Uday Shankar, CEO Star India.
“Axis capital acted as advisors to Star and also executed the on-market sale on August 5th 2015. This is in line with our strategy to focus on core businesses where Star has the ability to shape and scale the future growth path of its investments. Our programming and contractual relationships with Balaji are deep and we continue to work on strengthening them to our mutual benefit,†he added.
Star had bought 21% stake in the company in 2004 for Rs 90 per share and had raised it to 25.99% later through an open offer.
The production house had an exclusivity deal with Star. Balaji Telefilms is known for some of the top soaps such as Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kasuati Zindagi Ki.
Balaji Telefilms’ shares were up 19.96% to 95.25 at the close of trading on Wednesday.
21st Century Fox has announced that the Board has appointed Lachlan Murdoch Non-Executive Co-Chairman and James Murdoch has been elevated to the position of Co-Chief Operating Officer. The announcement was jointly made by Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Chase Carey, President and Chief Operating Officer; and the 21st Century Fox Board of Directors.
Rupert Murdoch said, “Lachlan is a strategic and talented executive with a rich knowledge of our businesses. From 1994 to 2007, Lachlan’s executive career at the company spanned the globe, culminating as Deputy Chief Operating Officer responsible for the group’s most important publishing businesses in addition to its vast U.S. television station holdings. I’m very pleased he is returning to a leadership role at the Company, where he will work closely with me, Chase, James, and the rest of the Board of Directors to drive continued growth for years to come.”
He continued, “We are pleased to elevate James into this important role alongside my partner and trusted advisor Chase Carey. I’m confident James and Chase will continue to make a great team during this time of immense opportunity. James has done an outstanding job driving our global television businesses and our shareholders, customers, and colleagues will benefit greatly from his many talents. This Company has never been better positioned to capitalize on the increased global demand for quality storytelling and news, and our collective future has never been brighter.”
As Non-Executive Co-Chairman, Lachlan Murdoch will work closely with senior management and the rest of the 21st Century Fox Board in developing global strategies and guiding the overall corporate agenda. Lachlan will divide his time between Sydney and New York.
As Co-Chief Operating Officer, James Murdoch will partner with Chase Carey to set the strategic direction and drive momentum across the Company’s global portfolio of assets. In this capacity, James will have direct responsibility for Fox Networks Group, which will now report to him. James will also have direct responsibility for the strategic and operational development of the Company’s owned and controlled interests in the pay-television Sky and Star services in Europe and Asia, respectively. James will continue to report to Chase Carey.
In addition to these appointments, the Company also announced that Peter Rice, Chairman and CEO Fox Networks Group, has agreed to extend his employment agreement.
James Murdoch said, “Under Peter Rice’s leadership Fox Networks Group has continued to push creative boundaries across the Company, and has grown tremendously with successful channel launches including Fox Sports 1 and FXX, an increased international footprint and enhanced sports offerings across the world. Chase and I are delighted Peter is committed to continuing to grow this incredible business and look forward to even more success in the years to come.”
Rupert Murdoch and Mukesh Ambani will join hands to spearhead a plan, one of the most ambitious yet, to make football a major television sport in cricket-crazy India.
Mr Murdoch’s Star India has picked up a one-third stake in a company jointly owned by Mr Ambani’s Reliance Industries and IMG that’s set to launch an Indian Premier League-style football tournament starting January, a move that may just work, experts said.
This follows similar attempts to popularize sports other than cricket – like the Premier Hockey League and Indian Badminton League – but it’s the first time a major broadcaster has taken a stake in such a venture. Star is paying Rs 2,000 crore in a deal that includes equity and broadcast rights for 10 years.
“Having Star on board as a partner strengthens our efforts and commitment to propel Indian football to its rightful place. We see the launch of the football league as the realiation of a dream of billion plus Indians to experience the most cherished game globally in new ways,” said Nita M Ambani, Mukesh’s wife and chairperson of IMG-Reliance. The Ambanis are already prominent in sports as owners of the Mumbai Indians IPL team.
IMG-Reliance acquired commercial and marketing rights for football in India in 2010 from the All India Football Federation for Rs 700 crore to be paid over the 15-year period of the deal. The deal included starting a new football league.
Star India initially considered just a 10-year broadcast deal for the as-yet-unnamed, three-month-long league before deciding to buy a stake in it. The deal is on the lines of the state television broadcaster CCTV partnering IMG for a 10-year rights deal for the Chinese Super League.
“India is hungry for its second sport. Our attempt is to bring an unparalleled football experience to our viewers,” said Uday Shankar, chief executive officer of Star India. “We want to put India on the global map.” Mr Shankar has been instrumental in Star’s India strategy of investing heavily in sports, which he sees as the next biggest generator of viewership and revenue after entertainment.
Each of the eight teams in the football league will have 22 players, with 10 of them from overseas, eight from India and four from the local area under 23. The eight cities are Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Goa, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore. Bidding for the franchises will take place at the end of this month. Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan and cricketers MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly have shown interest in bidding for the city teams.
Though AIFF runs many tournaments, including Nehru Cup, Federation Cup and the revamped National Football League, now called I-League, football hasn’t been able to get anywhere near the fan following that cricket has. But things could change, experts said.
“That Star is making this aggressive foray is a good thing for sport and for television,” said Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director at top media buying firm Madison World. “If large investments come into football, it could create another culture of sport in the country instead of only cricket.”
European football clubs also see potential in the country, especially going by the growing following for the English Premier League as well as tournaments in other countries. Viewership numbers for cricket and football aren’t that far apart, although the gulf in advertising rates is much wider, since the bulk of this is for overseas soccer. In 2011, there were 83 million TV viewers for football in India, compared with 122 million for cricket. Between 2005 and 2009, the audience for football in India rose 60%, according to TAM Media Research.
Arsenal recently signed a deal to open official Arsenal Soccer Schools across India. Liverpool Football Club is setting up a residential football coaching academy to develop players up to age 18. Real Madrid Foundation has set up a social and sports academy in Kolkata. The world soccer federation Fifa itself has shown interest in developing the sport in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a roundtable meeting with top American CEOs from the media and entertainment sector. Â This happened last Thursday, September 24, to be precise.