The Murdoch Archipelago

by Bruce Page

  The paladins of Carlton and Granada joined with Murdoch in furious attack on the Davies plan, which was to put the digital-pioneer responsibility (with safeguards) firmly on the BBC. In terms of pluralism, it was not an ideal solution, but it avoided the delusion that the ITV companies had a surplus of creative energy sufficient to launch a new division of their industry. Notoriously, the Carlton-Granada joint venture failed after doing considerable damage to programme-makers and football clubs. Few analysts were prepared to excuse ITVDigital, except to note that the battery of anti-competitive practices built into Sky by its original construction and years of political protection could well have made the task impossible for a considerably abler team. Today the monopoly is stronger than ever – even if present scandals have weakened Murdoch’s grasp of it.

  Nobody reporting the Blair government doubted that its media policies were circumscribed by Newscorp (and there is additional illustration below). Everyone knows that Murdoch, appeased adequately, will deliver his troops. Though discipline may be ragged, in the way of mercenary bands, the job gets done. But what ‘present necessities’ have driven so many politicians to make so many grubby, short-sighted accommodations? Machiavelli’s iron rule of political survival states that mercenary alliances are worthless. Is the great realist’s advice obsolete in this respect? How much if at all do tabloid leader-writers differ from condottieri?

  Over time, ideas about words, power and politics have certainly altered, and something in the present context may explain Newscorp’s appeal. We know that Augustan or early-Victorian oligarchs kept an editor or two – plus a shrewd mistress and some discreet thugs – and that they were discommoded when newspapers grew rich and bribery declined. In the last century Stanley Baldwin saw media bosses trying to reverse the trade in power, and repulsed them with the famous courtesan metaphor. His cousin Kipling asked Beaverbrook personally to explain the erratic politics of the Daily Express, and was told: ‘I want power. Kiss ‘em one day, kick ‘em the next.’ That was when Kipling called Beaverbrook a ‘harlot’ (the private breach anticipating the Prime Ministerial broadside). However, the subject fairly surely was not ‘power’ in the orderly, creative sense electoral office-holders prefer; the Beaver meant the ‘black arts’ of mischief and disorder. Kipling was a practitioner – not an impresario – of journalism, and his reporter’s intuition saw far past Beaverbrook into the dangerous future of industrial news and entertainment.

  Their extreme corruption, Kipling thought, might create lunatic societies – a theme of several intricate parables written prior to August 1914. The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat begins with an irresponsible magistrate imposing phoney motoring fines on four newspapermen and a show-business boss – adding moralistic lectures and anti-semitic wit to amuse his rural gallery. Their revenge – hypnotic spin applied to national news and entertainment – turns the village into a world centre for insane cults. Responsibly, the illusionists close the show short of fatal chaos (the takings go to their ace reporter and star singer, riding together into the sunset). But the comedy carries traces of hysteria, amplified in darker tales like As Easy as A. B. C. – where isolated survivors of an indescribable ethnic holocaust have learnt to treat populist rhetoric and exploitation of privacy as ultimate felonies. These subtle visions anticipated the totalitarian regimes which made them crudely real (and perhaps contain other warning hints: look at ‘reality TV’ in their light). Kipling didn’t think constitutional societies were helpless against media corruption, but that only increased his contempt for anyone naively fooling with the defences in time of rising danger. The ‘power’ Beaverbrook coveted had no legitimate uses.

  More prosaically, political scientists in the inter-war years developed statistical surveys of media influence in societies still relatively healthy. And Paul Lazarsfeld in America attacked a fundamental puzzle. Republican opinion then dominated newspapers. But it was an era of Democratic electoral supremacy – so what about Northcliffe’s ‘power of the rotary press’? Lazarsfeld’s work showed that, where a valid parliamentary structure coexists with even mildly diverse news media, the masters of huge circulations cannot determine electoral outcomes. Editorial views, however strenuous, are just one element in a manifold; and six decades of work throughout the democratic world supports Lazarsfeld, suggesting that within any nation the legitimacy of politics and of news media interdepend.

  Successful newspapers in free societies lean to conservatism, reflecting their character as property. That this makes no decisive impact is for some hard to bear. The right feels that ownership deserves more, but is robbed by liberal conspiracy. The left suspects occult property-effects, which explain the proletarian indifference to Marx. The reality is that media systems don’t naturally resemble an irrigation array with pumps and regular conduits. Scientific inquiry suggests something sponge-like – an intricate wetland, with hidden linkages between its primary channels. Many compounds stain its waters – nutrients or pollutants – and diffuse without great respect to the place or purpose of injection.

  For almost everyone, primary news comes via broadcasting – still roughly neutral in competent democracies. At least, it doesn’t trade characteristically in revelations with high partisan potential. These originate chiefly in newspapers, magazines or websites, but their essentials seep circuitously into broadcast channels, and basic facts often survive the journey better than nuances of spin and propaganda. Many people gather only minimal political data first-hand, augmenting it on occasion from personal contact with the zealous few. A nation is a community of micro-communities, trafficking in advice, hints, gossip and ideas

  – often political – and most individuals possess a relative expertise. (Social science advanced hugely by finding that knowledge of US farm machinery was distributed far better than any relevant literature – because catalogue-buff farmers often shared a jug with others.)

  Media grandees sometimes despise the ‘punters’ – a blank herd accepting ‘dumbed-down’ propositions. But best evidence is that modern communities track social and political events alertly, because they consist of individuals with assorted personal and institutional sources. This alertness rises generally with education, and now brings attitudes which trouble office-holders deeply. The best recent study is by the Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris. A Virtuous Circle covers all the OECD nations, finding similar core-values in all these industrialised democracies. Her burial of the myth in which television is print media’s enemy we cited earlier. Overall, ‘dumbing-down’ notions make a poor statistical showing.

  Data for reading, viewing and political action of course varies by nation, but chief indicators are robustly alike: newspaper sales sustain themselves reasonably well, usually with a trend towards broadsheets; use of current-affairs television links with reading, practices which reinforce each other. Commitment to political and civic action accompanies this, but includes critical perception of the systems involved – that is, ‘virtuous circles’ stimulate interests which need satisfaction. This means that declining apathy may in time be replaced by disengagement due to unanswered criticism. This, though superficially similar, is dynamic, not inertial, and is also deadlier.

  The Norris evidence doesn’t say that ‘dumbing down’ and political necrosis cannot become serious because so far they have not. It may be read as an early warning of stratification in the rich democracies, with high-grade media separating (often profitably) from junk aimed at groups suffering educational or geographic disadvantage (like Americans outside the range of strong metropolitan newspapers). Junk media may well stimulate a psychic analogue of obesity. Britain, with the biggest, most necrotic popular press, has unusual rates of distrust for both its politicians and its news media. But nothing suggests a universal law at work. More likely is that some media operators feed on – and feed – particular ailments overdue for treatment. This is the realm of Murdoch, and perhaps of his imitators.

  Surely popular opinion may be wrong, but not in general th
rough frivolity, or through the politician’s all-consuming involvement. What detached judgment exists is most likely distributed across the population, and opinion-research records show, in free electorates, a history of sensible perception – supporting Machiavelli’s argument that peoples are wiser than princes. The chief gains in public consciousness probably develop from transactions between a detached majority and particular witnesses with imagination vivid enough to survive extreme emotional fields – where prosaic observers suffer overload, forming the inexact images which propaganda magnifies.

  The Cuban war Stephen Crane covered after his imaginary Chancellorsville began in a media frenzy, and some US officers claimed that the Spanish were mutilating corpses. Like others, Crane reported the fantasy – one of a type frequent in war. But Crane could create battles of his own (as it were), and he went with a US Army surgeon to examine the dead precisely. Their injuries, it turned out, were made by high-velocity jacketed bullets, a recent advance on lead and black powder. Hearst’s editors didn’t find time for the rewrite, staying with the fantasy. Before Crane’s short career ended he taught them a little better. (Links between emotional capacity and precision were discussed in Chapter 3 above.)

  Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last Governor, is not unique among politicians in finding Murdoch’s status paradoxical. The aid he provides ‘is only available if you don’t need it’ – a leverage not just unconstitutional, but unuseful in Patten’s view. However, the ex-Governor isn’t orthodox. Awe of Newscorp colonises most minds in or near office, and sceptics rank about level with advocates of unprotected sex. Patten, as the British Tories’ strategist for the 1983 general election, disputed his colleagues’ belief that the advertising spend should focus on the Sun. His research showed that most Sun readers saw it as supporting Labour: showing that their interest in its TV, sport and celebrity coverage didn’t extend to its political pronouncements. Still, faith in Rupert, steersman of the proletariat, was just as bulletproof as the ALP vision of a biddable monopolist.

  So another circle needs squaring. Northcliffe’s contemporaries could half justify obeisance, when opinion measurements didn’t exist. Today, power like Murdoch’s should be recognisably spectral. To be sure, it might become substantive with a modest rise in media-concentration permitted under democracy (modest, because large ones have already occurred). The last century proved that dominion – if rigid, unstable and hysterical – can be imposed once monopoly is sufficient. It also showed the effects of diversity to be highly resilient, with a breakdown point difficult to predict. Doubtless it is short of the Nazi case, where all editors were state censors (even those few with papers not run by the regime). It must vary with the health of law, parliament and related institutions. Italian democracy has been visibly ailing while Murdoch’s friend Silvio Berlusconi controls – privately, or as Prime Minister – most of Italy’s television, and much of its newspaper, magazine and book output.

  Certainly there are Anglo-American financial engineers eager to take the experimental process further. But, as a witness to the Shawcross Commission suggested, once it’s taken to the point of diversity being extinguished, there’s unlikely to be a comeback. A glib theory says electronic media are automatically diverse – bilge to drain when we come to Murdoch’s China. In present fact, legislators entertain hallucinations about media power such that their behaviour might make it real.

  Pure lack of moral fibre can’t explain it. Electoral office is no trade for selfseeking fools, especially on pay which CEOs with a tenth of the ability-level would inflate by many powers of ten. Indeed democracy as employer seems both ungenerous and inconstant, which may explain something: Newscorp’s fitful acclaim at least gushes. Sir John Kerr found himself an intrepid patriot in the Australian, as the Thatcherites stood invincible in the Sun; Tony Blair’s advisers were delighted when their man scaled the Thatcher plinth in Newscorp’s pantheon. Hero-worship certainly is a Newscorp competence, refined internally. If Kelvin MacKenzie can equate Rupert to Mozart, admiring Bob Hawke must be easy work.

  Still, this is flimsy comfort. Little in opinion-research is steadier than the popular-trust surveys in which politicians rank bottom with journalists and dealers in real estate. And complexities apply in the media case. Close analysis shows that public contempt concentrates on tabloid practitioners – television newsreaders (journalists after all) rank as high as doctors. Additionally, maverick status may have professional value when convertible loosely to ‘iconoclasm’ or ‘exclusiveness’. But politicians face uncomplex facts. Without some trust-like commodity, convertible formally to votes, their occupation’s gone.

  If you want a friend in politics, said Harry Truman, ‘get a dog’. In this lonely trade a newspaper may do as well, and the radical insecurity which this suggests has increased. Clement Attlee, an effective Prime Minister who ignored newspapers and used the Cabinet news-feed only for cricket scores, was unusual in the 1940s, impossible today. He would be startled by the idea of keeping his occupation a secret. Coexisting with this media-soaked practice is a traditional theory that politicians should find psychic refreshment in national sentiment. There is talk of ‘mandates’ and of the inspiration a majority brings. We may see a crowd’s welcome lift some minister’s grey fatigue of office. We hear that ‘the people have spoken’ (or confided their wishes via focus groups). But this now is a mantra which has lost much of its significance.

  Lincoln’s words in 1863 – government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ – are not yet empty. Evidently, the people are governed. Evidently, it is done for them, as graft is historically modest. But it is hard to speak with his directness about government by the people. Democracies today are explained in layers of proxy and delegation – often sincerely, but what emerges is not the Gettysburg meaning. Something once active is now passive, and what was subject has acquired qualities of object. Of course Lincoln’s ‘people’ was restricted: Roman populus rather than plebs – that is, free citizens qualified to have a voice in affairs. Lincoln did not require that every man be included identically, nor did he consider women. But more important than qualification – which is anyway broadening – is how Lincoln expected the qualified to act, as participants in a ruling process.

  That expectation has a complex past. The Athens of Euripides is distant, but the idealistic debaters in The Suppliant Women still appear in school, quoted by Milton in Areopagitica. From The Prince it arrives with zero idealism. Machiavelli specifies that in a political community people and ruling class are one body, membership being by free will. A prince rules active colleagues, and – banishing mercenaries – is sustained by the people’s qualities: courage, reason and above all constancy. Though Machiavelli saw no infinite virtù in the people, he judged (expertly) that only treachery would be found by seeking support anywhere else.

  Many Florentine texts develop the theme, but ‘Of Mixed Principalities’, the famous third chapter of The Prince, gives its essence describing the arbitrary regime which lost Milan for Louis XII. Scholarship traces it through Puritan England, then revolutionary and federal America, as the ‘Atlantic republican tradition’. What has changed since Lincoln’s crystalline definition (apart from slavery, the barbarity he was excising)?

  Machiavelli, Milton and Alexander Hamilton experienced nothing of mass society Lincoln only its dawn. As a Founding Father – of journalism Hamilton was prophetic about editorial techniques, and how they might shape a national imagination. Mass societies would have abstract qualities hard to grasp, easy to distort. But not even he foresaw their development under bureaucracy’s impact. Abusive labels aside, ‘bureaucracy’ is Weber’s term for extensive rationalistic organisation: corporations, public or private, learning to measure human needs and supply them through complex systems calculated to suppress accident. The years when its most potent form took over European-derived societies were called in Chapter 9 the Age of Normality, after its basic statistical tools.

  As a comparison, the old Chinese manda
rinate had its bureaucratic qualities, but over centuries the condition of its vast clientele did not alter, or its own minimal presence expand. In the Atlantic case, over a few generations, life changed as never before, and a new domain of methodical structures established itself. Now, just the government’s part (the pure bureaucracy, shall we say?) handles some 40 per cent of a total wealth eclipsing Golconda. Ghosts of Marx and Smith dispute which benefits flow from the private manifestations, which from the public. What matters for the interplay of people, rulers and media – Milton’s investigation is that they irresistibly are benefits, including a life-span once considered implausible.

  Hamilton’s colleague John Adams told his wife that ‘light and glory’ should turn up some time after 1776. Abigail, sustaining farm and family amid smallpox, monetary chaos and near-famine, correctly judged that posterity would be ‘scarcely … able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors’. Not much machinery of palliation existed in Machiavelli’s world or hers. Now it’s installed, we rebel against its human components – because they constrict as well as sustain us. But we do not rebel systematically, if only because ‘they’ now are also ‘us’. Brewers and meat inspectors use fund managers; air-traffic controllers seek building consents; an engineer illuminates the hospital where a psychiatric social worker assesses her child for autism.

  In exchange for indirect power over the vast apparatus, our politicians become responsible for its workings. No rational harlot – no Florentine prince – would accept this asymmetric prerogative. One of its lesser effects is hugely to centralise guilt, so that the government, like Donne’s thief at bar, is questioned ‘by all the men that have been robb’d this year’. Still, it provides some administrative legitimacy, and allows politicians some credit should net improvements appear. Thus persuasion – the end-product of partisanship – may convert to executive outcomes, and votes. However, extreme crisis apart, the ‘people’ – the collective entity – are not involved. Members of our supposed ruling class participate individually, on the occasions when as cogs (maybe eminent ones) they perform a particular task. To update Lincoln, we routinely have government of and for the people – government by the people, perhaps, if push comes at last to shove. The inconsistency between our professions of democracy and the realities of social organisation has not precluded material success. By degrees, though, it is making politicians into vassals of tabloid media.