The Murdoch Archipelago

by Bruce Page

  The book is dedicated to my wife, Anne Page. It is in no sense an adequate return for her gifts to me, but it is something which would not exist without her strength and resolution.

  NOTES

  1: A MAN FIT FOR POWER? Commmittee proceedings at www.parliament.uk/business/committees/. Ofcom is Britain’s communications regulator, controlling the TV and radio sectors, fixed-line telecoms and mobiles, and the spectrum over which wireless devices operate.

  Newscorp is our usage for News Corporation, the Murdoch master-company descended from News Ltd of Adelaide, South Australia, which Rupert inherited from Sir Keith Murdoch. It is now registered in Delaware, USA. News International Ltd is its subsidiary for UK television and newspaper assets.

  Fit and Proper: The Financial Services Authority Handbook is at www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/handbook.

  2: A CONTINENT OF NEWSPAPERS Epigraph 1, Bigelow. Quoted by Michael Schudson, The Power of News. Epigraph 2, Wright. Collected Verse.

  Improbable, etc. Blainey’s most famous account of Australia is The Tyranny

  of Distance (1966), which made a powerful theme of remoteness. Later writers have criticised him in detail – and for an unfair account of the indigenous Australians and their mistreatment. But his general point about the Australian achievement still has its strengths.

  Anglo-Celtic tensions. Though ‘only a small part of total emigration from Ireland, Irish immigrants were a higher proportion of the Australian population than in any other Irish migrant destination … [and possessed] confidence beyond their fellow Irish in North America and elsewhere’ (Professor Eric Richards in Davison et al., The Oxford Companion to Australian History). Some religious and ethnic hostility can be traced in almost every part of national life. It has been said that within the ‘Invincibles’, the great cricketing combination of the 1940s and 1950s, Bill O’Reilly and other Catholic (Irish) players were at odds with the Protestant Bradman. If such disunity existed, their opponents were never able to benefit from it.

  Tera nullius , whispering. The full story is given by Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land (1987) and This Whispering in Our Hearts (1991). The Mabo decision in the High Court of Australia (1992) struck down the terra nullius principle, but the issue of land rights is modified rather than settled.

  Melbourne. The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne by Graeme Davison describes the sudden transformation of an illegal settlement into a hectic metropolis. For this story Michael Cannon’s The Land Boomers has maximum relevance as it is revealing about Theodore Fink, initial developer of the Herald newspaper empire.

  Trollope made his first visit in 1871. Australia remains in print (University of Queensland Press; also Sutton Press Pocket Classics) and is well worth reading, if some appalling remarks about Aboriginal people can be overlooked.

  Zenger. The Press and America by Michael Emery and others is probably the most accessible of numerous American references to this case. It deals with the issue of criminal libel, central to the relationship of press and state – a major theme of this story.

  ‘No linear process …’ is my own phrase, which I hope properly encapsulates Schudson’s subtle account of the growth of press liberties.

  Port Phillip Herald. Quotation from a collection of facsimiles published by Herald and Weekly Times in 1990.

  Federal Commonwealth. Our Future’s Past, written for the centenary, demonstrates the Australian and popular character of the constitutional debate burying the curious myth of an imposition from London.

  D. H. Lawrence. Cited by Humphrey McQueen in Temper Democratic. Lawrence is generally reckoned to have caught the physical environment of Australia brilliantly in Kangaroo (1925).

  Twopeny succeeded as a journalist in Australia, but regarded himself as English, with a friendly but critical attitude to local institutions. He was also involved in Melbourne business, which he thought highly corrupt.

  600 newspapers. Elizabeth Morrison in Davison et al., Oxford Companion to Australian History cites the Australasian Newspaper Directory, produced by the Gordon and Gotch advertising agency in 1888.

  Cricket. Twopeny gives the cost at 10s 6d per word, which roughly converts to A$300. The central event of the tour was the initial Ashes Test’ at the Oval.

  Ned Kelly. The execution, and demonstrations against it, are reported in the Herald edition of 11 November 1880. Nobody wishing to survey the Kelly legend will have difficulty finding material. The most recent item, Peter Carey’s novel The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001), has been read extensively in Britain and the US.

  ‘Rivers of gold’. The first use of this phrase is hard to find, but its currency continues.

  Words and drugs. Kipling’s address to the Royal College of Surgeons, 1923.

  Fink’s career. Theodore Fink left his papers to Melbourne University, but nothing was done about them until the mid-1990s when Professor Don Garden was persuaded to take them in hand – perhaps rather against his will. However, the result, A Talent for Ubiquity, is an intriguing account of a complex Australian. I have followed with gratitude in Professor Garden’s track.

  Secret compositions. This is Michael Cannon’s special territory in The Land

  Boomers .

  Economist on Newscorp finances. Issue dated 18 May 1999.

  Murdoch family, Scottish antecedents and David Syme. The basic

  biographical facts are well known and well stated by Shawcross, in Murdoch, and others, including the connection of Syme as Keith Murdoch’s first employer. They don’t record the deplorable character of the Age as an editorial environment, for which a primary source is Geoff Sparrow (ed.), Crusade for Journalism, the first official history of the Australian Journalists Association. Syme is a puzzling figure, described in detail by C. E. Sayers under the title A Colonial Liberalism though he was an advocate of protection and of state socialism. Gaps between theory and practice were large: Syme supported the Anti-Sweating League, but sweated his own editorial employees (as Keith Murdoch made clear in later years). The AJA history is concerned with the setting up of the union in Melbourne in the early twentieth century. The central message is that the Argus and Fink’s Herald group, though never enthusiasts of unionism, were businesslike and reasonable, whereas the Age victimised anyone suspected of union activity, a practice continued after Syme’s death in 1908. Syme strove to repulse another wave of the future – federalism – until Theodore Fink assembled a group of Melbourne worthies which persuaded him that resistance was hopeless.

  Printing technology. Emery et al., The Press and America deals concisely with the introduction of automatic typesetting and web printing. Kipling evokes web machinery through the names of two of the famous manufacturers (‘The Harrild and the Hoe …’) in ‘The Press’, verse epigraph for The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat, a story about the Edwardian growth of mass communications.

  Stringers, news philosophy etc. Max Frankel, The Times of My Life – and My Life with The Times (1999), a classic account of the reporter’s work.

  Herald machinery. On 26 February 1923 the Herald published a special edition for its move into state-of-the-art offices in Flinders Street. This described the Hoe web installation of 1912, which was modernised and much expanded on the new site, giving at the same time details of the facilities for news reporting and processing of graphics.

  3: THE SOUTHCLIFFE INHERITANCE Epigraph 1, Lyons to Keith Murdoch. National Library of Australia, cited in George Munster, Rupert Murdoch: A Paper Prince.

  Epigraph 2, Eugene Meyer. Cited by Katharine Graham in Personal History.

  Biographical details of the Murdoch family are on record in numerous sources. William Shawcross received substantial assistance from Rupert Murdoch for his biography (Murdoch, 1992), and his account is generally the most detailed. The text was read (and to some extent edited) by Woodrow Wyatt as Murdoch’s representative (see Wyatt, Journals, vol. 3). I have therefore treated it as being reasonably close to an official version.

  Towering figure. John Grigg�
��s volume in The History of The Times (vol. 6: 1966–1981).

  Comatose, expertise etc. This version appears in Shawcross, Murdoch, and to a lesser extent in other versions: Shawcross saying that the Herald was so loosely sub-edited that press releases were put straight into the paper. This story was told of the Age during its decrepit 1950s, but is highly unlikely to be true under the editorial system set up by J. C. Davidson (not that public-relations handouts were very common then). Northcliffe by Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth (1959) is filial, but with access to family papers gives detail about Northcliffe’s rise and discusses his eventual breakdown rather frankly.

  Opinions of Northcliffe. Most standard accounts of British politics 1900–20 give similar accounts of the way Lloyd George and others saw Northcliffe.

  Fink, Davidson, Murdoch, Innes. Don Garden, A Talent for Ubiquity remains the principal source for Fink’s role at the Herald group. Professor Garden also made use of the Murdoch Papers in the National Library of Australia. References to Fink are from Garden unless otherwise stated.

  Herald business, design etc. Munster, Murdoch, which takes the story to 1985, is much the best informed of previous accounts, especially on Australian background and newspaper economics generally. Garden comments on the Heralds editorial development as seen in the Fink papers and describes manoeuvres over the editorship in 1920. Some of the financial details are supported by the (sadly incomplete) Melbourne Stock Exchange files at Melbourne University. The British Library contains a nearly complete run of the Melbourne Herald from 1890 to the present Herald-Sun which incorporates the once separate morning paper. Gaps in 1914–18 have been filled from the complete run in the Public Library of Victoria. Simple inspection shows a reasonably sophisticated broadsheet layout developing before the First World War, certainly far in advance of The Times, where Murdoch received some production training before returning to Melbourne. A Herald special supplement, The Herald’s New Home, 26 February 1923, gave much detail of the new building and its equipment, which together with Garden’s account shows that it must have been conceived by Fink and Wise. Garden cites Newscorp in 1995 attributing the work to Keith.

  Murdoch arrives in Melbourne. Garden quotes Smith’s Weekly on the Northcliffe–Murdoch golfing partnership and the discomfort of Wise.

  Support by Northcliffe. Shawcross, Murdoch, describes the meeting with the Herald directors but does not mention Northcliffe’s mental derangement. Garden quotes Murdoch’s letter to Northcliffe giving thanks and describing lobbying.

  ‘Chief, marriage etc. Murdoch’s urbanity is common ground in Munster, Murdoch, Shawcross, Murdoch, and other accounts. Serle makes clear in Monash the hostility of both Monash and White to Murdoch continued (cloaked in outward correctness). Murdoch’s attempt to decide the form of the state’s war memorial was defeated by Monash after a long campaign.

  ‘Greatest editor’, etc. This is from Grigg, History of The Times, vol. 6, but is echoed in Shawcross, Murdoch, and others. Munster points out that Keith Murdoch published little or no serious journalism, and was mainly interested in using inside information for political and commercial purposes.

  ‘Monty’ Grover and A. N. Smith are well described in a study by the Department of Journalism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, which lists major Australian journalists and their distinctive publications.

  Corporate manoeuvres in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland were described by Munster in Murdoch in 1985 and Shawcross’ biography follows them in outline. Neither had use of the Fink papers available to Garden for his Talent for Ubiquity, which make clear that Fink was in overall command of the South Australian campaign in particular. Syd Deamer’s role is mentioned by Munster and was amplified in personal interview (2000) by Adrian Deamer. Standard history is Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia.

  John Wren and ‘Red Ted’ Theodore. The main facts about ‘Red Queensland’ in the 1920s are in several standard histories and summarised under various headings in the Oxford Companion to Australian History. Details of Wren’s extraordinary quasi-criminal career and his involvement with Labor politicians and the Catholic Church continue to emerge. There is a wide range of academic material posted on the Net. Power without Glory (secretly published in 1950) is still worth attention. The impression left by Garden in Talent for Ubiquity is that Fink would not have taken the lead himself in dealing with so notorious a character as Wren, but was content to benefit personally if the younger and hungrier Murdoch chose to. As noted elsewhere, Fink had been ready to cut corners in his own early days.

  Murdoch and Lyons. The lunch exchange is quoted by Munster in his Murdoch from Enid Lyons’ memoirs (Among the Carrion Crows). Munster then discusses the subsequent relationship between Murdoch and the Prime Minister in detail, especially the argument over radio licences. Most Australian political sources agree on the closeness of the relationship between Lyons and the Herald group under Murdoch leadership.

  Menzies, Murdoch and censorship. This bizarre story is visited very briefly in most accounts of Keith Murdoch’s life, and there is very little trace of it in the Herald files. However, the basic facts were recorded at the time in non-Murdoch papers (Sydney Morning Herald, Age and so on) and are detailed by Garden in Talent for Ubiquity from the Fink papers.

  Disappearance of Fink. Again, Garden’s Talent for Ubiquity provides details. Melbourne University Press filed all the reviews of Garden’s book, and there are none in Newscorp papers. John Fitzgerald in a personal interview described the ‘absence’ of the newspaper’s founder. In my own time I never heard of Fink, which would be like training on the Guardian without hearing of C. P. Scott.

  Rupert’s youth, influences etc. This follows what he told Shawcross, who also interviewed Darling. The teacher (now deceased) quoted an extremely hostile portrait of a Murdoch-like baron from the Australian novelist Martin Boyd (in Lucinda Brayford, 1948). Web postings by ex-students of Darling’s suggest that he evoked admiration from most of them.

  Michael Schudson holds a chair of sociology at San Diego, and has published much scholarly work on media systems. The quotation is from The Power of News, in which most of his principal ideas appear, including the ‘commercial professional’ model of American journalism. Schudson of course does not regard this as an ideal system, but convincingly shows that deliberate partisanship has declined with the development of professional journalistic education in university departments.

  Professional development in Australia. Sparrow, Crusade for Journalism.

  ‘God-given’ gift. In Graham, Personal History.

  The Red Badge of Courage. Crane’s gifts are brilliantly discussed by Michael Robertson in Stephen Crane: Journalism and the Making of Modern American Literature, which cites the remark to Conrad. The New York Times on 27 August 2002, reporting memorial work at the Chancellorsville battlefield, referred matterof-factly to Crane having fought there.

  Fright, nausea etc. This is in Christiansen’s autobiography Headlines All My Life. He is certainly not the only celebrated editor who admits to having found reporting extremely difficult and emotionally disturbing. Graham feels she was only adequate, and Christiansen perhaps rates himself lower – emphasising admiration for his betters.

  Stenography, mental devices etc. Personal experience. The estimate of Australian reporters is in Christiansen, Headlines All My Life. Scott is cited above.

  Britain’s news system. Donald Read, The Power of News, the official Reuter history (not to be confused with Schudson above), gives details of the rise of news agencies in the second half of the nineteenth century.

  Rupert and the Herald and Birmingham Gazette. The Shawcross and Munster Murdoch biographies square up reasonably. During the 1950s there was no awareness in the Herald newsroom that Rupert Murdoch had done any significant work on the paper – indeed, had been present at all. For separate reasons neither Shawcross nor Munster was familiar with the then Australian training system, though it indelibly marked anyone who experi
enced it.

  Australian Broadcasting Tribunal records for Murdoch evidence (cited in Chapter 11).

  ‘Keeping one’s cool’. Jane M. Richards and James J. Gross, Department of Psychology Stanford University, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, September 2000. The abstract (which does inadequate justice to this brilliant paper) states:

  A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one’s cool may vary according to how this is done.

  Self-assurance, accident. This is from Max Weber’s celebrated essay, The Profession of Politics, 1919 (trans. Simona Dragici, 1989). Weber (1864–1920), a central figure in rigorous social science, is best known for The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). It is not widely realised that the 1919 essay is only a fragment of Weber’s work on journalism and newspapers, in which he was deeply interested from 1905 onwards. Weber himself wrote for a variety of newspapers, and planned a major study on the press in Europe and America. The 1914–18 war and his early death frustrated this, but his journalistic work is being collected and published in German. The Cambridge Companion to Weber, ed. Stephen Turner, helps in tracking references to newsmedia issues which are scattered throughout his existing publications.