Maude Nificent#Auspol #Journalism #Murdoch #DemocraticCapitalism in the 70s
more from Things You Learn Along the Way by John Menadue
this section talks about Murdoch and The Australian newspaper
“While Murdoch was in London buying newspapers, Deamer [the editor of the Australian] had more independence in Sydney. But on his return, after talking to a few of his business and political contacts, Murdoch invariably gave new directions to Deamer. Deamer later complained, ‘Murdoch is an absentee landlord visiting Australia for short periods, three or four times a year and making snap decisions while he is here’.
In August 1970, as Murdoch was at Sydney airport returning to London after announcing plans for the launch of the ill-fated Sunday Australian, he instructed News Limited’s chairman in Australia, Ken May, about editorial changes for the Australian. The Phillip Adams column was to be dropped, Mungo MacCallum was to be taken out of Canberra and Bruce Petty was not to draw about Palestinians. ”…
…“When the Springboks Rugby team arrived in June 1971, the Australian carried an editorial, ‘Cynical use of Prime Ministerial power’, after Prime Minister McMahon announced that RAAF planes would carry the South African footballers around Australia if the ACTU carried through with its proposed transport boycott of the players. The Australian editorial accused the Government of dividing Australians and giving implicit support for apartheid. Murdoch was furious. Back in Australia in July 1971, he decided that Deamer had to go.”
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“By the 1960s the News of the World, in London, owned by the Carr family, was sinking in a sea of genteel incompetence and alcohol. It was a tawdry Sunday newspaper with a circulation of six million, the highest in the English-speaking world. Its readers got a diet of gossip, sex and scandal.
Murdoch’s main competitor in 1968 for the News of the World was Robert Maxwell of Pergamon Press, who was associated with the Labour Party. The Carrs didn’t want to sell their inheritance to a Labour-sympathising, anti-Nazi Czech who was thought to be a Jew. The editor of News of the World described his paper as ‘as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding’. Murdoch, though a boy from the colonies, was clearly not Jewish and was educated at Oxford. So he was welcome; as Sir William Carr, the chairman of News of the World, somewhat pathetically put it: ‘Thank God, you’ve come’.
It was a cheap purchase for Murdoch, with full control. Anything less was unacceptable. Jack McEwen put in phone calls to Prime Minister Gorton to ensure that Murdoch got approval to transfer funds to London for the purchase. Treasurer McMahon had refused but was overruled. McMahon was close to Frank Packer and would not want to be seen to be helping his competitor, Rupert Murdoch”
RevDrMatthewFox
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Ande Jacobson
Kellum Dander
Joanna George