Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Years ago, when computers from one of Rupert Murdoch’s many American companies were used to hack into the secure websites of one of its competitors, the news never made it to the front pages although the company attorney admitted this fact in the court. But that was not bizarre. That was in line with how things work in the US. What was noteworthy was the threat that one of Murdoch’s executives apparently made to the victim. Warning him to stay away from any sort of direct competition, the executive offered a rationale: “I work for a man who wants it all, and doesn’t understand anybody telling him he can’t have it all.” More than anything else, it is this line that describes Rupert Murdoch. And it also indicates why in spite of all the odds, he is here to stay.

Since the phone hacking incident in Britain blew up, experts and industry insiders alike have come out with their respective versions of what awaits Murdoch and his empire and if the fighter would finally throw in his towel. People writing his epitaph are basing their predictions on some short-term setbacks and also seem to draw parallels with Nixon after Watergate.

It all started with that one line that a committee of MPs wrote in a report extremely critical of Murdoch and his son James’ role in the News of the World phone-hacking affair. While summing it all up, the committee maintained that Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person” to hold billet of a major international company. It also concluded that his son James Murdoch showed “willful ignorance” of the degree of phone hacking during 2009 and 2010. The extremely provocative document drove a wedge among MPs along party lines. All Labour MPs as well as the lone Liberal Democrat in the committee, Adrian Sanders, voted in favour of the censure whereas, unexpectedly, all the five Tories protested the insertion of the criticisms.

Now that is quite telling. That this mild censure, unaccompanied by any punitive measure whatsoever, barely got passed even on the face of such overwhelming evidence, itself underlines the kind of clout Murdoch and his entourage wields in the corridors of power.

“Murdoch remains a grand vizier, pulling the strings and being the ventriloquist of political puppets, a figure who exerts a control over public opinion that is always hard, if not impossible, to gauge yet all too apparent,” maintains Binoy Kampmark, a Melbourne based media expert who was earlier a Commonwealth Scholar at Cambridge and has followed Murdoch’s adventures both in Australia and Britain.

The situation at the Leveson Inquiry is no better. In fact, people who have had a chance to watch the proceedings unanimously maintain that although Murdoch appears feeble and sorry in appearance, his talent for wielding the stick when the going gets tough has not left him. In a coup of sort, when he realised that the previous deposition at 10 Downing Street was acting funny by propping up issues like “ethics” and “morality”, he arranged that the world knows a thing or two about why The Sun in 1997 decided to back Tony Blair in the elections and not the darling Tories. The very next day, One Brewer’s Green bore a deserted look  with MPs tripping over each other to hide from the media.

Since his street fighting days Murdoch also possess the talent of ‘absolute lack of subtlety’. Although Tories loved him to no end, he wanted to send them a rather not-so-subtle reminder. So his son, James Murdoch, released a series of documents indicating Jeremy Hunt, the minister in charge of studying, examining and awarding a $13.4 billion bid by Murdoch’s News Corp. for full control of the British Sky Broadcasting, had clandestinely helped to advance the deal. Needless to say, the disclosures sent even the current deposition at 10 Downing Street into a tailspin. However, unlike One Brewer’s Green, 10 Downing Street did not have the luxury of getting deserted. A head had to roll and roll it did. Prime Minister Cameron had sworn to stick by Hunt who put up a spirited show in the parliament. However, Hunt’s chief adviser Adam Smith, the go-between man for James Murdoch, had to resign. Almost at the same time, a visibly relaxed Murdoch assured the inquiry that he had no sway over Britain’s politicians worth mentioning.

How innocent. It is not for nothing that Martin Dunn in his piece in The Guardian noted acerbically that Rupert Murdoch has by now managed to make the wielding and  superintendence of power “seem as dull as chartered accountancy.”

“Blair’s integration into the Murdoch family is apparent from the fact that he became godfather to Rupert’s daughter Grace, whereas the current British Prime Minister visited Murdoch on his daughter Elizabeth’s yacht in 2008. Do I need to say more,” adds a rather peeved Kampmark.

That sums up the situation in Great Britain. Now let’s take a look across the Atlantic. 

 

The “damning” verdict in London was plastered as headlines in the New York Times, Washington Post and Murdoch’s own Wall Street Journal. Naturally, it would have made a rather uneasy read for News Corp. staff and shareholders in the US. Doomsday experts suggest that the verdict, harmless in itself, might have repercussions over pending lawsuits in the US over hacking and the threat of possible prosecution under the powerful Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

However, as we write this, News Corp. staff and shareholders appear steadfast in their support for Murdoch. In fact, the staff made it very clear to anyone willing to listen that they think that the verdict against their boss was “unjustified and highly partisan”. And then, there are shareholders.

Says Charlie Beckett, director of Polis, a London based media and society think tank, “While there is definitely support in some quarters (among shareholders) for trimming Murdoch’s control over News Corp., a large section has not forgotten that Murdoch’s sharp business acumen has paid dividends, irrespective of any queries of ethical guilt.”

He further adds that the verdict might have some nuisance value when it comes to acquisitions, mergers and other future activities but in the short run, he does not see mortal setbacks to the company or its subsidiaries. He has other reasons to believe it too.

Let’s put Murdoch’s sway in the US in perspective. Merely two weeks after he was fired from Fox News for turning out to be a “mole” who was revealing uncomfortable secrets about the news channel, Joe Muto was paid a surprise visit by New York County District Attorney officials, armed with a warrant to confiscate his cellphone, laptop, flash-drives and diaries. Now that is not surprising. What is rather surprising is the quickness shown by the law enforcement agencies to a comparatively minor criminal proceeding. Specially, when you put this in perspective with the case that one of the competitors of Murdoch owned News America filed long ago. The competitor’s  years of plea to the law enforcement agencies to fully investigate the aforementioned instances of hacking into their website remained unanswered.

Now that is what I call power to sway. Under the circumstances, what is to be expected from the proceedings in the US? We have some inkling on that. Only last week, Senator Frank Lautenberg asked FCC (the agency that renews licenses of the broadcasters) Chairman Julius Genachowski whether the London verdict meant the FCC would revoke any of the 27 broadcast licenses awarded to Murdoch’s ventures in the US. “It’s not appropriate for me to comment,” Genachowski was reported as replying. He then quietly left the scene. Let me make it clear here that  Julius Genachowski is a hardcore Democrat.

And he is not alone. His response and tenor matches that of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who has refused to inquire into Murdoch’s misdemeanours, piling evidence of News Corp. violations notwithstanding. “This is a story about a unit in another country,” Issa had the guts to say during an interview with Murdoch’s Fox News Channel. “And we want to make sure we don’t enter the ground that is most inappropriate for us.”

All these will weigh heavy on President Obama in the election year. Needless to say, if the administration comes to its own, Murdoch’s empire will be finished overnight. But there is a big “if” in this. It will be interesting to see if Obama risks such an action in the run-up to the elections, especially when his numbers are rather shaky.

Till then, suffer the Fox.