The Murdoch Archipelago

by Bruce Page

  Murdoch wrote to Evans about the central role of intellectual consistency in the practice of serious journalism. My chief area of concern about the paper is one I have raised with you several times: the paper’s stand on major issues. Of course it takes attitudes, but I fail to find any consistency in them, anything that indicates the clear position of conscience that a great newspaper must be seen to hold. Just what that position is, it is your duty to define, and it cannot be defined by me. But it must be defined with clarity and authority and even repetition.

  Put like that, was it much to ask? Enough hints, suggestions and exposition had been offered to make known what ‘clear position of conscience’ meant. A few days earlier Murdoch had sought out the chief leader-writer, Owen Hickey, and – without quite ‘instructing a journalist’ – had described in detail the foreign policy which The Times could suitably advocate: terminating all trade and diplomatic relations with the USSR to procure social implosion there. Of course Murdoch could not actually write it down, just as he could not have given Giles written orders. It had to be Evans’ own idea.

  The difficulty was the pure nonsense involved. Not the policy of economic and social warfare itself – a coherent enough scheme favoured by the hawk minority in London and Washington – but the assertion that The Times lacked clarity with respect to it. The leader column had rejected it as ‘apocalyptic’. Perhaps one day the West should ‘gamble with the stability of the entire continent’ but right then The Times wanted a policy of selective sanctions and pressures for the liberation of Eastern Europe and Russia (perceptible, in hindsight’s luxury, as correct).

  Text and conversation together make the position quite explicit. It is reasonable to think that if Evans had produced two or three vehement leaders (repetition was required) switching The Times to a new anti-Soviet policy he could have gone back to ‘producing an exciting newspaper’ like Christiansen after Munich. (It would have been abrupt, but not more so than the Adelaide News reappraising White Australia.) Doubtless there would be other arguments – monetarism perhaps

  – but peace for now. Instead Evans wrote back to Murdoch asserting the solidity, details, clarity and so on of Times leaders on the USSR and a raft of other issues. His basic message was that he planned to be consistent about all of them.

  Personal interchange at The Times now grew conspiratorial. Douglas-Home assured Evans that he was not after the editor’s job – it was outside his capacities, and he would never work for ‘that monster’. But a little later Evans heard of Douglas-Home saying to the economics editor David Blake, ‘Don’t bother with him [Evans]. He’s finished.’ What was all this? the editor asked his deputy, and got the reply: ‘Yes, let’s face it, you are finished. You’re not getting on with the proprietor.’

  Much of Evans’ time was now devoted to searching the staff for people willing to leave, to make up the cuts required to save the paper. When the Spectator revealed the names of three who had chosen to depart Murdoch seized on the evidence of failing leadership: ‘I am frankly disturbed by the decision of Messrs Hennessy, Berthoud and Berlins to leave you.’ That the chairman’s charge against his editor should be inconsistency was ironic. This was Murdoch’s propensity to attack from any direction, without himself admitting any need for coherence – something which Long had taken for irresistible force of personality.

  Douglas-Home then wrote to say that he too wished to go after two or three months. Evans asked him to reconsider, and to keep it private until the immediate crisis was past. The information reached Murdoch anyway. And Gerry Long, with his kitchens zapped and most of his powers stripped away, revealed that he would soon be ‘having a change’ and suggested that the editor, surely, must be miserable and ready to resign. Not at all, said Evans, editing The Times was an enjoyable challenge. He certainly was not going to give himself up as a last offering for Long to take to Murdoch.

  On 9 March Murdoch sent for Evans and demanded his resignation. Murdoch centred complaint on the emotional state of the staff: they were ‘in chaos’, and the editor was highly unpopular. Part of this emotion was actually the responsibility of Murdoch, part of it Evans had properly brought on himself, by chastising the Old Times with scorpions. The insouciance with which the chairman conflated the two causes dismayed Evans, and he realised that quickly separating them would be hard, even impossible. Criticism of the staff is never pretty in an editor, and the national directors – first judges in the matter – had a collective affinity with the Old Times. Being representative rather of the governing class in a fairly limited sense – than the nation, they did not instinctively loathe passivity in journalists. Evans did not know that Murdoch had already offered the editorship to DouglasHome – who also had his affinity with the Old Times, and had been refreshing it.

  According to Evans’ account the chairman seemed to find the interview highly painful, suggesting that it was harder for him than for Evans and coming close to tears. This, though consistent with the tone of his correspondence with Rohan Rivett, was sharply different from the jaunty air of Murdoch setting out to terrorise Giles. However, for all the odds against Evans, forcing the editor’s resignation was a risky undertaking. If Evans chose to fight, and found the means to do so, the case against him would not withstand real inspection.

  Evans withdrew to consider his position and was approached by DouglasHome, who said, ‘He had me up before you. He offered me the editorship of The Times and I have accepted.’ Evans pointed out that the office was not yet vacant, and asked how he felt about betraying his editor. The reply was: ‘I would do anything to edit The Times. Wouldn’t you?’ Perhaps it had looked like that. Certainly Evans had failed to see things which Murdoch had done to others. But there were things Harry would not do to himself for the sake of editing The Times.

  The question was whether he could and should fight Murdoch for the right to do it freely. Would resistance trigger a structured inquiry by the national directors? That context might bring out their considerable qualities: Robens had come close to being Prime Minister; Dacre was a major historian; among them only Pickering was simply a placeman. They might not all like Evans, but they understood evidence and Murdoch’s dubious claims were unlikely to deceive them long. The national directors, though, had no organisation. Even settling on a volunteer to act as chairman and co-ordinator, Evans realised, would occupy agonising time. There had been discussion of fine principles in the origin of the guarantees; there had been no discussion of procedure and contingency (echoing the case of the Royal Commission). The editor would have to make and argue his own case: he would have to build the courtroom and construct the procedure. And he would have to do it while producing a newspaper every day – with a deputy behind him declared as a ruthless opponent.

  Thus if he fought to defend his formal ability to edit The Times, he would be deprived – perhaps already had been – of the ability to do it well, and the ability to do it honourably could not persist long. A simple, often forgotten point is that no edition of a major newspaper appears without doing damage to a good many individuals, and usually to causes also. For an editor of Evans’ quality to continue in nominal, disputed control of The Times would be little different from a mariner taking a ship to sea without having it under proper command.

  And so, after reflection, he resigned. Nothing in his experience had ‘remotely compared to the atmosphere of intrigue, fear and spite at Murdoch’s Times’ Discovering that the quarrel with Murdoch was unavoidable had taken so long that the odds against him were insuperable. But he did not compromise his own character in conducting it. The budgetary and personnel-management complaints were spurious in a commonplace sort of way. More remarkably, Evans was charged with having been an effective technician lacking conscience or conviction exactly what Murdoch actually wanted – and was executed for having been innocent of the charge. Kafka could not have made it up.

  It is not surprising that Murdoch and Pickering did not get what they wanted, but revealing that they were crude en
ough to suppose they might. The amoral editor who creates a brilliant newspaper may be defined as an ideal type, but manifestations are very elusive. We know the Christiansen-Beaverbrook example was in their mind, and Christiansen did produce rising sales while deferring to the Beaver’s zany politics. But had they not looked at the Express circulation, and seen what happened when journeymen like Pickering attempted to do the same? (see Figure 2 on p 121) Special factors, of course, permeate the Express case. Beaverbrook was a freakish despot, but not a calculating weathervane. Many of his beliefs he supported all his life; Christiansen shared at least some of them, and so trivially were they rewarded that something of conscience must have entered into them. Enough, perhaps, has been said (see Chapter 3 above) to show that Beaverbrook and his one great editor, working in unique circumstances, were a unique combination.

  And where were the repeat examples? Had nobody noticed that Larry Lamb believed the nonsense spouted in the Sun (in any case no very original feat of journalism)? There is no difficulty of course in being an amoral technician and losing sales (as the circulation figures show) and no certainty that qualities of any sort will lead to success. But it is a curious idea that a man or woman could edit a newspaper with technical facilities engaged, but conscience and emotion in neutral

  – no more plausible than the emotionally blank reporter, a figure disposed of earlier in the story.

  In the specific case it was very odd to suppose Evans was or could be like the ideal type required. Possibly his conscience was imperfectly adjusted (as most are). Like anyone performing in public Evans had displayed error and inconsistency. To many colleagues who had applauded him at the Sunday Times it had been difficult to see how he managed to admire Nelson Mandela as well as Henry Kissinger. He had taken over a Tory – if liberal Tory – newspaper, and was himself not a Tory: perhaps that had created some over-complicated positions. But to suggest that Evans was without conscience was ludicrous. To suggest it in the context of resistance to totalitarianism was only possible for people quite unable to grasp such issues.

  11

  PATRIOTIC LIKE A FOX, 1979–1985 Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel; but since all of us are to some extent scoundrels we are foolish if we get rid of our last refuge.

  REBECCA WEST, The Meaning of Treason ‘I am very proud and grateful to become an American,’ said Rupert Murdoch on the morning of 4 September 1985. He had just taken the oath at the District Court in Lower Manhattan, renouncing all allegiance except to the United States of America, and promising ‘without any mental reservation’ to support its laws. The practical significance of the oath was to make Murdoch acceptable in US law as controller of the Fox television network. But it was taken also as a symbol of something new in the world: the arrival, said New York Times columnist William Sarfire, of global man, a cosmopolitan equally at home in Sydney, London and New York. If so, this wasn’t the cosmopolitanism once imaginatively linked to the brotherhood of man. Another New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, pointed out that national antagonisms were a staple of Murdoch’s newspaper operations. By the 1980s Murdoch had become a significant figure in three systems of Anglophone national politics, and the path to American naturalisation included some complex interactions between patriotism, journalism and partisanship.

  In America, a central feature of the years 1976–85 was the solid failure of the New York Post as a newspaper. This did not destroy the legend of Murdoch as a tabloid genius, perhaps because it succeeded simultaneously as a political instrument, and wiseacre minds confiate the achievements. Though the Post once sold a million during its Son of Sam period the trend line until 1981 was similar to Dorothy Schiff’s paper. The real news coverage was no better, and headlines of ‘dark playfulness’ (or brutality) didn’t alter that. The Post fascinated (and still does) the communications elite, but the columnist Pete Hamill – attracting much punitive ire – once said it was like the fascination of watching someone throw up at a dinner party. To the intelligent middle class generally the paper could not connect. Bingo, the ancient gambling game revived as Wing in 1981, added 500,000 sales. Costs, however, rose in line, and the annual loss of some $30 million did not change.

  But the Post was a switch on the city’s political control panel, profitable or not, and Murdoch studied intensively to use it. When he claimed to have elected Mayor Ed Koch, Koch dutifully agreed – deferring so zealously that Murdoch was called, gratifyingly, the ‘real mayor’. No city before had made Murdoch so much at home as New York, and this accounted for the vivid (later awkward) interview in which he told Alexander Cockburn of the Village Voice that to ‘live and love’ anywhere else was unthinkable.

  The relationship with Ronald Reagan didn’t match Koch’s case, but was crucial to Newscorp’s development. In 1980 the Post was intensely Reaganite. The Republican banner on an old Democratic fortress was so conspicuous that no evidence was needed for major electoral impact to be assumed. The President personally thanked Murdoch and presented a large plaque which became the focus of the Post’s celebration dinner.

  In 1984, by which time Newscorp owned the Chicago Sun-Times and Boston Herald-American as well as the Post and the Texas papers, a more elaborate programme was possible. Murdoch’s territories were rich in the ‘blue-collar Republicans’ which Reagan’s strategists aimed at. The special component was a savage personal campaign, led by the Post, against Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale’s Democratic running-mate. It was devoid of original investigation, and came when the Democrats were anyway doomed. But again it was conspicuous, and Reagan’s second term confirmed Murdoch as a spokesman of partisan American nationalism.

  In the same late-1970s-to-mid-1980s period the Sun shifted its character, and modified Murdoch’s position in the British political cast. It did not learn to live with commercial failure like the Post – that would have been ruinous to Newscorp

  – but an intimation of mortality brushed it. By 1981 sales had fallen to 3.5 million from a 4.0 million peak in 1978.

  The Star had been launched by Express Newspapers in 1978 as a regional tabloid. Moving to national distribution in 1981 it achieved a million circulation, chiefly at the Sun’s expense. It didn’t just imitate the Sun, but imitated what the Sun had done to the Mirror – down to promotional television technique and an undercut cover price. Sir Larry Lamb (the knighthood was a reward for Tory campaigning services) called it a ‘cynical marketing exercise’. Murdoch responded by matching the Star’s price (a 2p drop to 10p), by setting up an expensive bingo scheme, and by removing Sir Larry in exchange for Kelvin MacKenzie as editor.

  MacKenzie himself acknowledged that the Sun’s sales resurgence might have been as much due to the bingo and cover-price effect as his dramatic editorial style (the Mark II Sun’s circulation graph is best analysed with 1990s data included). But MacKenzie, stimulated by Murdoch – ‘the Boss’ he worshipped and simultaneously dreaded – changed the British tabloid concept more profoundly than Lamb did. And this, perhaps, might not have happened but for Murdoch’s years at the New York Post – because the Mark II Sun, though much cleverer than the Post, and variant from a basically effective model, resembled it in being produced virtually without professional restraints, and being able to cross the border into dangerous fiction without knowing it had.

  The new Sun’s advent roughly coincided with the Falklands War, and as that was a crisis of survival for Murdoch’s patron Margaret Thatcher it was natural that the Sun should set out to fan British patriotism into a blaze on her behalf. But in the course of this project, Murdoch and his team began to rank themselves as judges of who in Britain counted as true and traitor people.

  The Sun’s least-admired Falklands headline began in a crude news-handling error. When the war began MacKenzie and his crew had little experience of handling swift, complex happenings in faraway places, and they started with some amazing blind luck, which rarely helps.

  A very familiar trap in war coverage derives from a habit – or art sometimes called �
�leaning it forward’. Naturally there is an interval of some six hours between the editing of a daily paper and its delivery, during which the events described within it can move considerably. The art is in creating something to last for several hours into the future – tricky during a shooting war, as genuine battles rarely come off quite as anyone plans.

  On 23 April 1982 the Sun’s correspondent in Buenos Aires, David Graves, sent a very cautious report that British forces were approaching South Georgia, the outlying island where Argentina’s invasion had begun. Recapture might be imminent (his Argentine military contacts suggested). The Sun subs turned this into a stunning front-page lead:

  INVASION! Britain’s counter-invasion forces swept ashore on the stolen island of South Georgia yesterday …

  They then phoned Graves to tell him MacKenzie was delighted with the great exclusive – and please send more details of the fighting. Of course he didn’t even know there was any.

  Still, by the time the paper hit the streets the Royal Marines really had taken South Georgia, and the Sun office concluded that war coverage was a breeze. They celebrated by announcing that the Sun’s man with the carrier fleet would paint ‘UP YOURS GALTIERI’ on a missile and sign it; this was illustrated with a shot of a Polaris ICBM. (The Royal Navy didn’t fancy the idea, but the Sun later claimed a non-nuclear device had been launched carrying suitable words.)

  However, this was really a foggy kind of war, with British reporters and businessmen active in Argentina, and battle confined supposedly to an ‘exclusion zone’ around the Falkland Islands. On 2 May a British submarine sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrallo, drowning roughly a quarter of its crew. Not only Argentines were outraged, for she was outside the zone, and a naval antique. In Britain, which has long-standing ties with Argentina, there was distress, and while the Royal Navy felt justified, it avoided triumphalism.