The best days since Watergate

July 15th, 2011

THESE are glorious days for journalism. We celebrate the end of the Rupert Murdoch era, in which he systematically degraded what we do and wielded a malign influence in London and Washington. His corruptive hold over the British establishment is broken, and this can only lead to a waning of his power and influence in the media world.

Confronted with the illegal activities of his reporters, Murdoch has had to close the 168- year-old News of the World newspaper and withdraw his bid for control of BSkyB, which would have given him 70% of the British pay- television market.

It is too soon to write off his News International company, as it is still huge, profitable and powerful. He still controls 37% of the British newspaper market and a siz able chunk of its television.

He still has The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times in the UK, and in the US he has Fox News, the Daily News of New York and The Wall Street Journal.

But this empire grew beyond all reasonable size and influence through a cosy relationship with the British administration. That is now broken beyond repair. The announcement of a yearlong commission of inquiry means we can expect a slow drip-feed of further scandal, which might spread to other tabloids. And Murdoch is facing scrutiny in the US and Australia as well.

One had to have some admiration for him. He built the most powerful media enterprise in the world, with cunning and boldness. He was the only owner who had the brutality to take on the print unions when they were destroying Fleet Street in the 1980s. He broke the stranglehold of the three television networks in the US with the creation of Fox, and he pioneered pay-television.

But he cared only about his company, and he used the power it gave him with chilling determination. He drove a truck through media ownership restrictions that were designed to prevent any single individual — such as himself — from gaining such power. Once he had enough power to influence the fate of prime ministers, and with the ruthlessness to abuse such power, Britain’s political establishment chose to cultivate rather than confront him.

Margaret Thatcher rewarded him for his support with an exemption from ownership regulation. Lance Price, who had been a media adviser to Tony Blair, wrote in 2006 that Murdoch “seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard, but his presence was always felt”. He described Blair flying across the world to address Murdoch’s executives and how Murdoch was one of three people who would always be consulted on key decisions.

Now the association with Murdoch is undermining the position of Prime Minister David Cameron, and opposition leader Ed Miliband feels free to attack him at will. The spell has been broken. Murdoch has lost his political protection.

A social cancer is being expunged. The “anything goes” culture of his newsrooms, in which reporters behaved as if they had immunity, has to come to an end. Eight journalists have been arrested and more arrests are likely. And Britain, the US and global media and information — not to mention democracy — will be the better for it.

It will not mean the end of this type of bottom-feeder populism, but it will stem its ascendancy and contain its influence. As one London letter-writer put it, this is the best moment for journalism since Watergate.

The failures of the British system will feed into our own debates in SA about how best to stop the corruption of journalism. And it is worth thinking about this carefully.

It was a newspaper — the Guardian — which exposed Murdoch’s telephone-hacking scandal. The police had failed to pursue the matter properly, and the British Press Council had been unable to deal with it. The story burst into the open because of the relentless digging by Guardian investigative reporters, who stuck with it when all the relevant authorities had tried to walk away.

We have all been shocked by the worst of British tabloid journalism, as represented by Murdoch’s minions, but we should also be impressed by the display of quality newspapering, of great journalism that stepped in when other institutions failed.

It is one of the ironies of British media that it produces some of the worst and some of the best journalism. Publications like The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, The Economist and — before it fell into Rupert Murdoch’s hands — The Sunday Times are not perfect, but they have produced a good deal of fine journalism in all its forms.

Murdoch showed us how media freedom can be abused. But the other papers showed us how essential media freedom is to stopping such abuse. The danger of a crude regulatory regime — as advocated by some in SA — is that it can restrict the freedom of quality papers along with Murdoch’s bottom-feeders.

This is an important reminder that media freedom carries a price, but the loss of media freedom carries an even higher price.

We need to keep in mind the roots of the British crisis: allowing one man or company too much media power, and allowing a too cosy relationship to develop with the authorities. And it escalated into a political crisis because Cameron hired, as his right-hand man, a former newspaper editor who was implicated in the worst of Murdoch’s journalism, Andy Coulson.

In SA , the government’s complaint is that our media is hostile, not that it is too friendly. The anger of the authorities is not at our growing tabloid culture as much as it is against a hard-hitting press, which sometimes gets it wrong. They argue that journalists are casual about the damage they cause with bad journalism.

This needs to change — and is something that newspapers acknowledge. The Sunday Times held its own inquiry into accuracy issues; the Press Council was upgraded and beefed up a couple of years ago; and now a Press Commission had been formed to look into ways of improving regulation. I don’t think there is a single editor who denies that there is a need to tighten editorial systems and purge newsroom complacency, though they are hostile to the idea that politicians can do this for them.

But Britain shows us that politicians also have to face up to their side of the problem. It is the authorities who have to act to promote media diversity and prevent monopolies to ensure we do not have our own Murdoch. It is for our politicians to ensure that the police act if journalists break the law.

And it is for politicians to ensure they do not reward those who corrupt journalism (as they have done a few times, such as in promoting Ebrahim Rasool to be our ambassador to Washington after he made secret payments to journalists).

The real lesson from Britain is that the cultivation of a culture of public responsibility and service in journalism requires self- criticism and change from both the media and politicians. Both parties have to strive for the kind of mutual and arm’s-length respect which allows for critical and probing and balanced journalism.

There are many lessons to be learnt from the British crisis, for government leaders as well as journalists. And they are not always the obvious ones.

*This article first appeared in Business Day, 15 July 2011

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation