News critics guilty of jaundiced journalism

MURDOCH critics should hold themselves to same standards   

SINCE the issue at hand is journalistic standards, you would expect that the reporting of Britain's phone hacking scandal and its implications for News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch would avoid prejudice, innuendo and vindictiveness. No such luck. At The Australian we are in favour of robust debate, but we detect a hint of moral vanity in the ink of our rivals.

And, of course, the Left-liberal clique who have always for some reason railed against Mr Murdoch have seen it as a chance to prod their perceived nemesis. Commercial interests also are not irrelevant. Judging from its front page on Wednesday, for instance, The Australian Financial Review concluded the non-binding findings of a split British parliamentary committee report were of more import to its readers than the most dramatic drop in Australia's official cash rate since the GFC. Or take the ABC, which has shown infinitely more curiosity about the British media shenanigans and the ownership of BSkyB than it has about the $220 million Australia Network contract it was awarded, in perpetuity, by the Gillard government after twice losing the bid and improperly lobbying cabinet ministers.

Still, we would say that, wouldn't we? We hesitated before outlining our views on this page since we would inevitably be accused of talking our own book. The Australian, after all, is not only owned by News Corp, but also owes its very existence to Mr Murdoch's vision for a national daily in 1964. Yet we would be failing our readers if we did not share our honest and rational views on this controversy.

We should restate our view that phone hacking is corruption of journalism: it is a clear breach of privacy and illegal in most jurisdictions. Those journalists and private investigators who have been involved in such intrusions should be prosecuted. Any superiors condoning or turning a blind eye to transgressions also deserve to face the consequences. Likewise, bribes or payments to public officials for information should never be tolerated. Again, legal remedies are at hand. In Britain, in newspapers owned and operated by News Corporation, serious wrongdoing took place. Furthermore, once suspicions were aroused and misdeeds uncovered it took too long to investigate and bring into line. We must be ever-vigilant, but let us remember that these activities have been uncovered in London, where the aggression and feverish competition of the tabloids is legendary. The brutal and crass rivalry of the red tops simply has no equivalent in Australia. And, despite none other than our Prime Minister suggesting there are "serious questions to be answered" here, there is no evidence or suggestion that any of the excesses uncovered in Britain have occurred in Australia. And no critics or competitors here would be reckless enough to claim otherwise. At this newspaper, the idea of phone hacking is unthinkable - would we hack phones at the Productivity Commission to find out what it really thinks about labour market reform?

The emotional temperature of the hacking scandal rose dramatically once the intrusions were revealed to have targeted not only celebrities, but also the victims of crimes. The ugly insensitivity of the Milly Dowler case was the touchstone. But even here the heated reports of the critics ran ahead of the facts. The Guardian was forced to retract reports that journalistic hackers had deleted crucial phone messages on the murdered girl's phone - this, it transpires, had been done by police. After years of controversy, now is the time for sober reflection and workable solutions. While the News of the World has been shut down, the other London tabloids, Murdoch-owned and otherwise, continue their populist and competitive trade. They will all need to work hard to lift and uphold standards.

The parliamentary committee that reported this week needs to be viewed for what it is - we have similar committees of politicians in Australia that investigate a wide range of issues. They have strong powers to compel evidence, but usually little power to implement recommendations. They carry most weight when they are unanimous - when a consensus is built across the party political divide - otherwise they tend simply to vent politically motivated positions. In this case, it was the Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who were prepared to sign up to a finding that Mr Murdoch was not a "fit person" to oversee an international corporation. The words were inserted by the Labour MP Tom Watson, who has led the charge against Mr Murdoch as a personal crusade, has made his name through his vigorous and articulate posturing, and is currently selling a book he jointly penned about these issues. The attitude of many critics resembles a witch trial - Mr Murdoch is guilty if he knew about phone hacking and guilty if he did not. Clearly, the chief executive and chairman of a vast media empire cannot be expected to be aware of the coalface behaviour in one company that constitutes about 2 per cent of his operations. To call for Mr Murdoch's head on this basis would be like sacking Mark Scott because of transgressions at the ABC's Ettamogah bureau. Yet Mr Murdoch has candidly admitted error, saying the company should have "acted more quickly and aggressively to uncover wrongdoing". Those who acted illegally now will face the rule of law and executives have lost their jobs. The company will also be judged on the procedures it adopts to prevent recurrence. The NOW was deemed to have shamed itself into a commercial grave - after 42 years in the Murdoch stable, its 168-year history ended in scandal. As ever, the consumers of News Corporation products will have the ultimate say through their purchasing decisions. And the Leveson inquiry will, we hope, dispassionately assess the remaining issues in Britain.

Mr Murdoch is unquestionably the most influential and successful businessman this nation has spawned. Always anti-establishment, he challenged the entrenched powers of the Fairfax, Packer and other dynasties at home before taking on the Fleet Street establishment, where he immediately encountered colonial resentment - dubbed the "Dirty Digger". Whatever view people have of his tough-minded tactics in tackling the British printing unions in the 1980s, there can be little doubt he revived newspapers. In The Guardian this week, William Shawcross wrote about how, as Britain's "bravest and most radical" media proprietor in 40 years, he saved the bastion of The Times, let alone what he did in broadcasting.

The committee finding - rejected and described as overreach by the Conservative Party members - that Mr Murdoch is not a "fit person" to run BSkyB is all the more extraordinary given the successful pay-TV provider would not exist without the financial commitment and foresight of Mr Murdoch. His initial Sky television company lost considerable sums in its formative years, but the antipodean intruder was determined to use his newspaper profits to branch into television, and was convinced a private alternative to the BBC could thrive. After merging with British Satellite Broadcasting, his model proved prescient and profitable. Media and business analysts might well ask whether any other entrepreneur would have been fit and proper to realise such a difficult, costly and far-sighted dream. He built on this with the Fox media empire in the United States. Murdoch companies now have been responsible for some of the world's most popular television programs and movies.

To recognise these facts is not to deny valid criticism of Mr Murdoch or his companies. In Australia, where critics complain about the News Limited share of the newspaper market, we are left to ponder the landscape without it - perhaps Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart would have no daily paper or Melbourne and Sydney would lament the dominance of a Fairfax press that seems introverted and oblivious to the interests of readers who live more than 10km from the CBD. And this newspaper - a pet Murdoch project devoted to serious debate of national affairs - would simply not exist.

Should this record excuse Rupert Murdoch from accountability or scrutiny? Of course not. But for decades his commercial rivals, and politicians who prefer the dominance of government-funded media, have choked on his success. For complex reasons, an anti-Murdoch stance has become as entrenched in the boutique concerns of the trendy leftists in our universities and public broadcasters as anti-US and climate change alarmism. Yet the News Corp ethos demonstrably is one of the open mind. We have extensively covered the British controversy and, in London, Shawcross notes that the reportage in The Times has been "relentlessy fair". So much of the condemnation, here and abroad, has contained more schadenfreude than common sense. We, of course, would be expected to defend Mr Murdoch. And here, of course, we do not go into the intricacies of the misdeeds and the senior executives who have paid a price. We favour proportionality and context over running with a mob that might have political or commercial motivations.