Murdoch Woes

It just keeps getting worse for the Murdoch Empire. An empire so vast that it’s hard to grasp the wide flung tentacles that encompass a host of newspaper, television and entertainment entities spread across the planet. Rupert Murdoch’s shadow darkens almost every English speaking nation in the world, from his birthplace in Australia, to Great Britain and of course the United States. They are all rife with Murdoch properties. 

Things first began to get out of hand in Great Britain. London’s rough and tumble Fleet Street newspaper world, the world that formed the Murdoch culture has ironically exposed behaviors that may end it all for the clan. A rival newspaper, the Guardian, has unearthed one misdeed after another. Most of the media coverage has focused on the telephone hacking the Murdoch London newspapers seemingly used at every opportunity. That, however, is the least of it.

Murdoch scion, James –who heads (in title if not in fact) much of the family enterprise– testified before Parliament that he knew nothing of any hacking beyond one rogue reporter. When the then editor of the now shuttered News of the World and their legal manager came forth with detailed testimony to the contrary, it left James flopping about like a fish out of water. 

Rupert started with a tabloid stable his daddy left him in Australia. He moved on to London while still in his early twenties and much later came to America where he owns a wide array of media from newspapers to motion pictures to television entities. Actually it isn’t “his;” while Murdoch effectively controls News Corp, it is a public company. In fact it is an American company headquartered in New York City.

While fibbing to a parliamentary committee is serious stuff, it is not the worst of the specters looming over the Murdoch Empire. The courts present the most serious threat. News Corp stockholders are lining up to sue. These law suits are serious but not nearly as serious as the gathering storm in Washington. Rupert Murdoch is an American citizen, and News Corp is an American company; both are subject to American laws.

The U.S. Justice Department is looking at bribes paid to London police by News Corp newspapers. Under our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) American companies are not permitted to practice bribery abroad. News Corp is taking this threat very seriously, as well they should. They have hired a flock of lawyers to deal with it, many of them former Department of Justice FCPA experts.

As the noose tightens it’s hard to see any outcome short of the collapse of the Murdoch Empire. An outcome that would seem foreordained in a company run by a man described by one of his executives as, “a man who wants it all, and doesn't understand anybody telling him he can't have it all." That sounds more like a spoiled child than the kind of person we want running the largest media company in the world. While it fits the trashy tabloid culture that spawned Murdoch, a person of character would have grown into a more ethical mode. It seems a waste to have the resources Rupert Murdoch has amassed devoted to the smarmy ends he put them to.