Scratching Rupert Murdoch

I picked up the book Murdoch (1993) by William Shawcross in the cheapie bin at Lifeline book sale in January.  The book is an unauthorised biography and does not hold back criticism though Shawcross is recently on the record saying Murdoch saved journalism, at least in the UK. The front cover of my copy of his 1993 book is torn – an eye is scratched out of the subject’s portrait on the front cover. While there were those protesting against him outside the IPA dinner in Melbourne last week that might have deliberately torn it, it looked more like a label had been removed. I didn’t hold much hope I’d find a tattered 600-page, 20-year-old volume on Rupert Murdoch interesting, so it lay unread for several months under a pile of other books.

By coincidence it filtered back to the top of the pile as the media baron made a rare return to his native land last week. As he appeared at the Melbourne gig, he was greeted by a protester wearing a mask of Murdoch as the devil. The image of Murdoch as Satan won’t bother a Catholic/wee free 82-year-old whose gods are money and power but the protester was not the first nor last to imagine him as evil incarnate.

Forbes ranks Murdoch as only the 91^st wealthiest person in the world though the 26^th most powerful person. In this category Forbes tucks him in one spot ahead of Jeff Bezos of Amazon and one behind Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Yet it hard to imagine similar hatred against Bezos or Zuckerberg. Despite a silver spoon upbringing, Murdoch has always been an outsider. He is also a different era to the two Americans that have built international empires in his wake and his modus operandi has always been blatantly ‘my way or the highway’.

Only 200 pages in, Shawcross’s book has a gripping read following Murdoch’s footsteps, from out of the giant shadow of his father Keith and into the world of international communications. Murdoch snr was one of the most important people in Australia in the first half of the 20th century. In 1915 young Keith’s reports from Turkey to the Australian Prime Minister precipitated the end of the Gallipoli campaign. He grew as an editor in the 1920s under the tutelage of British press baron Viscount Northcliffe, Alfred Harmsworth.

Harmsworth showed Murdoch snr the importance of keeping a paper lively, a virtue Keith passed on to Rupert. Keith Murdoch was a hugely influential managing editor but at his death in 1952 aged 63 he only owned two newspapers: the Adelaide News and the Brisbane Courier-Mail. The titles passed to his only son. Young Rupert was still at Oxford University but already well mentored in the successful ways of newspapers by Harmsworth through his father: explain, simplify, clarify.

His mother Dame Elizabeth was immensely powerful in her own way and it was the widow’s recommendation they should sell the Courier-Mail when the Herald and Weekly Times came calling. Still overseas, Rupert acquiesced but was furious and was determined to build up what was left of his inheritance quickly. The Adelaide News was the minor paper in town compared to the Advertiser. But Murdoch’s inexhaustible energy pumped it up.

Never with much time for “elites”, Murdoch delighted in stoking up the News’s anti-authoritarian voice. But in conservative Adelaide, the News never strayed too far from accepted opinions. Murdoch was left-wing at Oxford and had a strong interest in Communism and a bust of Lenin in his dorm room. But once established as a newspaper owner, instinctive love of the ways of capitalism grabbed him by the throat. Even more than his managing editor father, Rupert became obsessed by the bottom line. He learned quickly how to pick winning politicians and then back them all the way.

Murdoch was more than just an astute proprietor; he had great knowledge of all area of his business. Often he and his senior managers would put out the paper when journalists went on strike. He impressed the printers in London when he climbed onto a machine and found the bar that would fold the pages to ensure the presses could run in tabloid format. Murdoch had inexhaustible energy and would run his business by telephone, constantly looking for deals to expand his footprint. His specialty was purchasing loss-making operations and turning them around.

He quickly outgrew Adelaide and brought his racy tabloid format to Perth before breaking into the Sydney market. Fairfax’s boss Rupert “Rags” Henderson preferred to sell a down-at-heels Mirror to Murdoch in 1960 ahead of more established rivals (to the chagrin of his Fairfax board). Murdoch seized the chance to buy in to Australian’s premier market-place. He could not immediately break into Sydney television but his Adelaide station was making plenty of money.

In the late 1960s, Murdoch was already looking toward the UK and USA.  He bought the News of the World after a protracted battle with Robert Maxwell and later The Sun. The News of the Screws was already a product of the gutter before Murdoch bought it, but the Dirty Digger (as the unforgiving British establishment called him) took it that step further.  While his papers were successful, he and especially his second wife Anna Torv, hated London. Anna was the intended victim of a kidnapping and the wife of an employee died in her stead. They were more anxious than ever to get a foothold in the US.

Murdoch started with two papers in San Antonio, Texas. The papers performed solidly though Texans were slow to appreciate Murdoch’s formula for success: exaggerated headlines, a lively style and infatuation with sex and crime. But it worked better once he got his foothold into New York through The Post,  the third paper in the US’s biggest city behind the News and the Times. But the summer of 1977 and the long-running Son of Sam saga, gave Murdoch the chance to dominate news. The powers-that-be and his rivals detested Murdoch’s hyped story-at-all-costs but he couldn’t care less. What did they know, they were just elitists or “pipe smoking journalist academics” and he was giving the people what they wanted. Murdoch’s power in his native land grew as his international interests expanded. He could even afford a loss-leader: The Australian.

Founded in 1964, the Australian was unique as a national paper in a country with deep metropolitan divisions. Its early years quickly established itself as a serious force and under editor Adrian Deamer an important part of the national political conversation. But Deamer was too independent for Murdoch. Deamer was good (and Murdoch grouchily acknowledged him as the paper’s best editor 20 years later), but he was too far removed from Murdoch’s growing conservatism and was sacked. Murdoch wanted editors who knew how to implement his formula, not set a path for social revolution.

Though he supported Whitlam in 1972, Murdoch was actively plotting against him three years later. Malcolm Fraser was the beneficiary (just as New York Mayor Ed Koch was two years later) of Murdoch political largesse. As a US watcher of that Koch election put it, “When the New York Times gives its support you’ll be lucky to get an editorial but when Murdoch supports you, you get the whole paper”.

Murdoch was gaining the reputation of a king-maker, something that prospective kings would quickly learn to take into account in their dealings with him. Australia is now small potatoes in Murdoch’s global reach but he remains the dominant figure in the local landscape.  The Greens may call Murdoch’s News Ltd hate media, but Prime Minister-in-waiting Tony Abbott was in the IPA audience last week listening to the Sun King. In 2011, former News Ltd editor Bruce Guthrie suggested Murdoch has let it be known within his organisation that Australia needed a change of government and his editors were simply doing his bidding. Guthrie had a spectacular falling out with Murdoch and is likely biased but he makes a good point about the extent of his company’s power: “Given News controls about 70 per cent of Australian newspapers, which, in turn, feed talkback radio and evening news bulletins, that’s a fight most politicians want to avoid.”

At the IPA dinner, Abbott called Murdoch  ”probably the Australian who has most shaped the world”.  Abbott was on less firmer ground when he said Murdoch’s opinionated but broad-minded publications had “borne his ideals but never his fingerprints”.  “He’s influenced them but he’s never dictated to them”, Abbott claimed. The point is, over the years Murdoch hasn’t had to dictate to his editors. With a few courageous exceptions like Deamer and Guthrie aside, most of them have known exactly what to do to keep their job.

Two bald men and combs: Stephen Conroy’s fight with Kim Williams

Our media sent themselves hurtling further towards irrelevance this week with an exaggerated response to modest proposals to strengthen an under-regulated industry. The reaction followed last week’s announcement by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy on the Government’s response to the Convergence Review and Finkelstein Inquiry.  The Convergence Review was about policy and regulatory frameworks in a converged media and communications landscape while Finkelstein examined media codes of practice in the Internet era.

Conroy proposed five reforms to deal with issues raised in both inquiries.  They were:  a beefed-up press standards model for print and online news media, the introduction of a Public Interest Test for mergers and acquisitions policed for diversity by a Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA), upgrading the ABC and SBS charters for online and digital activities, allocating the sixth free-to-air channel to community television and offering a rebate for more Australian content.

Conroy proposed three other reforms to be sent to parliamentary committee: The abolition of the 75% local reach rule, on-air reporting of ACMA regulation breaches and whether ACMA should consider news program supply agreements when determining if someone is in control of a commercial television broadcasting service.

University professor and media policy commentator Terry Flew calls the reforms low key and a “ very cautious, and in many ways piecemeal” response to the two inquiries. “It has probably not modernised media laws sufficiently to ‘tackle the challenges of the future’, although it does make some overdue changes to existing law,” Flew said.

But the Australian media that will be subject to the change saw it very differently.  For them, the five proposals were nothing less than an assault on freedom of speech. The Sydney Telegraph put Conroy in a rogues gallery of dictators likening him to Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim, Mugabe and Ahmadinejad. News Ltd group editorial director Campbell Reid defended the Telegraph’s chutzpah as a “provocative tabloid presentation of an incredibly provocative act by a Government.”  The Telegraph later issued an “apology” for printing a picture of Conroy dressed as Stalin. The apology was to Stalin who although “a despicable and evil tyrant who was responsible for the death of many millions,” he at least was “upfront” in his efforts to control the media.

This notion of control was picked up by many of the Tele’s News stablemates. Without a scrap of evidence, the Herald Sun turned Conroy’s package into “a deplorable assault on freedom of speech.”  This glossed over the assaults on freedom of speech practiced by the company that owns half the Australian media landscape.

James Paterson expressed the view of his bosses at The Australian to reveal the laws’ real purpose: to punish and rein in the federal government’s critics in the media. News Ltd boss Kim Williams said the proposals were “government sanctioned journalism”  and “dangerous policy” while the PIMA would be an “unnecessary novel creation”. Fairfax boss Greg Hyland was more measured but still saw the PIMA as a bridge too far.

No wonder Conroy took to the airwaves to describe Williams’ reaction as “hysterical”. He quoted at length from both inquiries from submissions which went to the heart of News Ltd’s huge penetration in the Australian market – something no-one from News was willing to admit was an issue. Conroy admitted the public interest test was contentious but said News and Fairfax had 86% of the market, “one of the most concentrated media sectors in the world.”

However in many respects the battle is irrelevant. Conroy has joined the bald Williams in fighting over a comb. Only a few media commentators like Alan Kohler understood the pointlessness of the struggle. He says regulating for diversity and complaint handling is irrelevant and unnecessary in a world that is quickly moving past the monoliths of print and broadcasting.

“Rebuilding trust with customers and keeping it is the greatest of all the challenges facing the media in the digital age, and dealing properly with complaints is an important part of doing that,” Kohler said. “The pity of it is that the PIMA and the complaints handling body will probably just be another set of slow, clanking bureaucracies that serve only to highlight the contempt that much of the media have for their customers.”

On Jonathan Moylan and the Whitehaven coal hoax

The latest in a long line of Aussie hoaxes was perpetrated to great effect this week though its creator might yet pay a penalty of ten years and half a million bucks. Anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan is in the wars for putting out a press release in the name of ANZ Bank on Tuesday. The release said the bank was divesting its $1.2b loan to Whitehaven Coal for its Maules Creek Coal Project. It was an important announcement. In Whitehaven’s own words, Maules Creek is “one of only a few remaining tier 1 undeveloped coal assets in Australia. It is also one of the largest coal deposits in Australia with 362 Mt of recoverable reserves.”

Before it could be exposed as a hoax, it triggered a stock market collapse for the coal company. While almost all of the losses were subsequently recovered before the day was out, Moylan’s actions raises serious political as well as ethical and legal issues. Using dubious means, he focussed attention on the important question about whether we should be investing in major coal projects in a time when fossil fuel emission is the biggest issue we face as a species.Maules Creek is in the heart of the rich Gunnedah Basin in NSW. That state and Queensland produce 97 percent of Australia’s black coal. It is an industry in decline with Australia producing 405 million tonnes of raw black coal in 2010-11 down from 471 Mt. in 2009-10. Yet Australia remains the world’s fourth largest coal producer and the world’s leading exporter with markets in Japan, South Korea, China, India and Europe. Coal fired generators are leading contributors (20 percent) to a greenhouse effect as heavy-grade emitters of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

The Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions acknowledges fixing the coal issue will be difficult. Coal is cheap, is important for meeting energy needs in the developing countries, and has good lobby groups in countries like the US, which is the “Saudi Arabia of coal.”  Coal-fired generators could still play a role if carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology ever takes off, possibly 10-15 years away.  There would also be a need for a carbon market, priced at around $30 a ton of CO2 and a way of retrofitting CCS into existing technology.  An ANZ that truly considered its customers interests, would ensure such boxes were being ticked. But it has no plans to do so and there is no scrutiny of whether such interests are considered.

Instead, the argument focussed on Moylan with those dividing into two sides on whether his hoax ends justified the means. Those that supported him like Bob Brown identified Moylan’s action as a necessary civil disobedience that brought out in the open ANZ’s investment in coal.  That brought out the coalition’s Eric Abetz saying the ends did not justify the means. He turned it into an attack on Lee Rhiannon and the Greens’ “extreme political tendencies.”

Whoever is right, there is one thing for certain – Moylan planned his attack well. He put together a fake ANZ press template, a website and dummy email inbox online. The press release was a remarkable use of managerial language to frame an argument that would be quite unusual and brave in an Australian business context. Moylan used the voice of ANZ Corporate Communications to announce the bank would not support the project. Toby Kent, “Group head of corporate sustainability” was quoted to say the company wouldn’t invest in coal projects that cause “significant dislocation of farmers, unacceptable damage to the environment, or social conflict.” The decision was made after “a careful analysis of reputational risks and analysis of the returns on this mine in the current climate of high volatility in the coal export market.”  The released concluded with the statement ANZ was undertaking “a review of coal and gas investments on productive agricultural lands and areas of high biodiversity.”

Moylan’s fake ANZ release was quickly picked up by AAP Newswire who failed to conduct any of the basic identity checks that would have exposed the hoax. At the bottom of the emails are phone numbers for Toby Kent and Joanne McCulloch “Media Relations Advisor” which if anyone had bothering phoning would have quickly exposed this email as a hoax.  Either that or a quick check of ANZ’s database of media releases would have been enough to dispel, or at least doubt, the information.

Instead AAP swallowed the news whole and provided it directly to the markets. When traders in the Australian Stock Exchange saw the newswires shortly after midday Tuesday, they went ballistic. Whitehaven bore the brunt as 85% owners of Maules Creek Coal. Maules Creek is 18km north-east of Boggabri on the Kamilaroi Highway between Narrabri and Gunndah. It is also just 16km from the railway line servicing the coal terminals at the Port of Newcastle, 360km to the south-east. Maules Creek’s current resources are expected to support a large open cut mining operation for 30 years at an average saleable coal production rate of 10.8 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa). Subject to approvals, the first coal production will commence in mid 2013, with saleable production exceeding 10Mtpa from 2016 onwards.

But it was a dead duck without ANZ’s investment, and within minutes Whitehaven shares plunged almost 10 percent from $3.52 to $3.21. Whitehaven Coal lost more than $276 million in market value. It capped off a bad year for the company since it merged with Nathan Tinkler’s Aston last April giving him 19.4 percent ownership. The share price has lost over half its value since then with CEO Tony Haggarty and the board blaming it on uncertainty due to Tinkler’s financial woes  - they want him to divest to institutions. Tinkler was quick to return fire on Haggarty and the board saying he wanted to increase his holding not decrease it.

That plan may be in tatters after Tuesday. The price did not recover until the real ANZ responded with a media release (pdf) entitled “Fraudulent media release regarding Whitehaven Coal”. This release (which looked remarkably like the fraudulent one) said ANZ remained “fully supportive of Whitehaven Coal.”
At the end of trading, Whitehaven was just 2c down on the day reflecting the fact there were other issues with the project. The damage done to Tinkler, was variously estimated to be anywhere between $50m and $180m (assuming it wasn’t him who picked up the shares when they were on the rebound).

Whatever the damage to Tinkler or Whitehaven, Moylan will suffer significant collateral damage. There is a strong prima facie case his actions were illegal according to Section 1041E of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).  That act states it is an offence if a person makes a knowingly false statement that is likely to make people dispose of shares. The maximum jail term for individuals is 10 years, with fines of up to $495,000. Organisations face fines of up to $4.6 million.

The Australian Securities Investment Commission said it would be investigating whether there had been a breach of Corporations Act rules on false or misleading statements. According to dean of law at the University of Western Sydney Michael Adams the legislation that deals with corporate fraud imposes a high penalty on false or misleading statements about traded securities on the ASX. Adams believes a successful prosecution will hang on the difference between a public nuisance and civil disobedience. “A protest normally provides publicity for a cause and brings the matter to the general public’s attention, but causes little harm to the community,” Adams said. “A fraud – and in particular one that impacts on the share market – has huge consequences”.

Research fellow on ethics Edward Spence picked up on Abetz’s argument about the ends and the means. Spence said Moylan’s ethical failings were harmful to the “integrity of the digital informational environment”. This is the environment whose trustworthiness, Spence said “we all rely on to conduct our legitimate informational transactions.” We are not only biological beings, he said but also and increasingly informational beings. “When the informational environment is harmed we are also harmed.”

Spence may be exaggerating the harm here as it ignores the fact that checks and balances such as AAP did not do its job properly. Nor did any of the rest of the media use the hoax to expose ANZ’s dealings with the coal industry. Why didn’t anyone ask the bank if they would do “a review of coal and gas investments on productive agricultural lands and areas of high biodiversity”.Why is it acceptable for the bank to continue to invest in projects that cause “significant dislocation of farmers, unacceptable damage to the environment, or social conflict?”

We’re waiting.

A new start it ain’t: Jenny Macklin and unemployment

The new Australian political (and election) year did not get off to an auspicious start with the Macklin affair though some good might yet come of it. The affair has seen a government minister tied up in knots about a nonsensical hypothesis, the media whipped up in frenzies of righteous wrath, and the leader of another party now wanting to live out the nonsense.

The problem occur on New Year’s Day. Families Minister Jenny Macklin held a door-stop media conference at a Melbourne hospital to promote the government’s Dad and Partner Pay scheme introduced on January 1. The scheme brings in government-funded paternity leave for two weeks so it should have been a good news story for Macklin to deliver.

However the journalists there were not interested in the good news, they were more interested in a bad news change that came in on January 1. This change was a follow on from a change John Howard made in 2006 which was to end the supporting parent allowance when the child turned eight. Howard exempted those already receiving the parenting payment before July 2006 who were able to keep it until their youngest turned 16. This meant there would be exemptions until 2014. However the Gillard Government has now ended that immediately, saving $728 million over four years.

This change shifts 80,000 single parents from the parenting payment to the Newstart allowance when their youngest child turns eight.  Some parents will be up to $110 a week worse off with the new arrangements and it was this issue that journalists turned to when one asked Macklin if she could live on the dole on $246 a week. Macklin could have done many things at this point, including refusing to answer on the grounds it was a very stupid question. Fellow Minister Tanya Plibersekwould later answer the question “properly” by saying “I don’t think anyone thinks it’s easy.”

But no such luck for Macklin, who gave the worst possible answer. “Yes I could”.  Macklin then made matters worse by omitting her answer from the transcript issued by her office. Macklin tried to push on by telling journalists they had simply applied existing rules to people who had on the payment since 2006. “What’s important for people who are unemployed is that we do everything possible to do everything we can to help people get into work and that’s what we’ll be doing with these single parents as well,” she said.

But it was too late. The damage was done by the killer quote. TV cameras captured that answer which immediately provided the headline for broadcast and print media and the subsequent non-appearance in the transcript merely fuelled speculation of a cover-up. Susie O’Brien in the Herald Sun went so far as to call it “obscene”.  Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie also took Macklin to task, but ridiculed calls for the minister to try surviving on the Newstart allowance. “You can’t replicate that experience if you are a senior member of government,” she said.

Goldie’s comment came as Greens’ leader Adam Bandt  repeated tragedy as farce by announcing he would live on the $246 allowance for one week, challenging Macklin to do the same. “Once you take into account your rent your bills, your food, there’s not much change left over from $35 a day,” he told reporters in Melbourne, but didn’t elaborate how much of his modern lifestyle and well-tailored suits would be pushed to one side to make ends meet in that week.

Bandt’s stunt had little to do with the Newstart Allowance and everything to do with his struggle to retain Melbourne at the next election. But the whole affair does highlight issues with the low benefit rate when there are systemic problems of under-employment Australia has not solved. While the current rate of unemployment is low at 5.2 per cent by historic and international standards there is a high degree of volatility within this rate. In March 2012 the unemployment rate in Tasmania was 7.0 per cent, nearly twice the 3.7 per cent rate in the Northern Territory. Similarly, in March 2012 the unemployment rate for those aged 15-19 is 18 per cent, more than three times the national average.

There are “dole cheats” but for the vast majority, the dole queue remains a humiliating experience for most people. Economist John Quiggan said that instead of completing the Howard agenda, the Gillard government ought to be looking at increasing the real value of benefits, “allowing the unemployed to share in some of the growth in incomes for the community as a whole”.  Even thinking about the absurdity of living on $246 a week, reminds us that many people have to do exactly that and some parents of those aged eight and over will now pay the price for the Government’s budget balance obsession.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Julia Gillard preferred to focus on solving the inequities of employment in the “patchwork economy” rather than increasing dole payments. “Some today see a problem, they offer blame”, Gillard told the Sydney Institute last year. “I see a person, a person who can work. I offer only opportunity, I ask only responsibility in return.”  If Gillard gets the public space to tackle that agenda, she might yet be grateful for Macklin’s mistake.

Brian Leveson – media personality 2012

The 2012 Woolly Days media person of the year is Brian Leveson. Leveson is a jurist not a journalist but his impact on journalism and the world of media this year has been profound.

The year 2012 will not go down as a great year for the world’s media. While the world’s business-as-usual pattern of production and consumption sees it barrelling down a path towards a 4 degree increase in temperature by 2100, the focus of most media attention is ever increasingly the deeply superficial.

Commercial media have always fulfilled two purposes: to make money and to inform but it is the profit imperative which is winning clearly at the moment. The large multi-national conglomerates that own media stock look no further than the bottom line when it comes to meeting deadlines. Issues like news values and ethics are a poor second if there is no payback. Meanwhile shareholder disquiet of falling ratings or circulations can be managed quarter to quarter by cost cutting and doing more with less.  There is as a result according to Michael Mandel, a “shift in journalistic employment to non-traditional industries, an increased in the self-employed, a delayering of journalism, and perhaps lower pay.”

Brian Leveson admitted as much on his recent visit to Melbourne. The closure of a large number of newspapers has reduced the extent to which local government, health, education and the courts can be held to account. “Society will be less well served as a result”, he said. Yet Leveson was aware that even if journalism jobs are becoming diffused and of less value, the media they serve remain powerful players as editorialists, chroniclers, sensemakers, muckrakers and watchdogs.

Their contract with the public to perform these roles is based on trust. The one to many broadcast model of television and the major papers ensured they always had the microphone to drown dissent. The internet and web2.0 changed all that and disapproval can amplify virally if compelling enough. The web further undermining the media’s privileged modus operandi by allowing a multiplicity of blog voices harvesting free online content often with more sagacity and insight than the journalists. Social media has forced big media to become more humble in their dealings with the public they profess to “serve”.

There remains pockets of strong resistance, with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp leading the counter-assault. This old fashioned News and Entertainment Empire (one of the few not owned by a non-news company) remains convinced it does not need to answer its critics. China is a rare failure but In the US, Fox News is highly successful while his 2011 plan to buy the 60.9 percent of British cable company BSkyB it did not own was just a whisker away from being successful when undone by fine journalism.

Revelations by the Guardian journalist Nick Davies and his editor Alan Rusbridger brought the sordid hacking affair to light. The shadowy practices not only showed the need for profit greatly exceeded all other motives but described the contempt News had for its own audience. With the weight of evidence growing Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Justice Leveson in June 2011 to investigate the culture, practices and ethics of the British press as well as the dealings between the press, politicians and the police.

As testimony followed testimony, it was clear much was rotten in Murdoch’s hamlet.  It wasn’t just the attitude that privacy was for paedo’s as former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan espoused, it was the scene of serious crime. As November 2012, there had been 90 arrests on charges of interception of mobile phone messages, payment to public officials, data intrusion. The Inquiry would expose potentially corrupt dealings between senior members of the media, political parties and the police.

In nearly nine months of oral hearings, almost all available to transcript or watch online, involving 337 witnesses and 300 statements, the Inquiry became “the most public and most concentrated look at the press” Britain had ever seen. It enormous resonance not only in Britain but wherever British legal, ethical and press traditions operate, such as Australia. The numerous celebrities who portrayed themselves as “fair game” to an uncaring media, added to the notoriety of the charges. Australian media were quick to distance themselves from the phone hacking but there but for the grace of god go they at any lengths for a story.

With such a wide ranging brief, Leveson’s Inquiry had important things to say about plurality of ownership, privacy laws, and regulation of the press, all of which got the media companies quivering in their boots. Leveson was at pains to stress his inquiry was not an attack on press freedom. However, he said, with rights come responsibilities and all too often the press has simply ignored them. Neither the press or the press council ever launched investigations into allegations of serious misdoings such as breaches of data protection or trade in private and confidential information. Indeed when the phone hacking issue was raised, police executing a warrant were driven off the News of the World premises while the Press Complaints Commission criticised the Guardian for publishing the results of their investigations into the cover-up.

In November 2012 Leveson released his findings in a 2000 page report and 48-page executive summary.   Leveson proposed an independent replacement for the Press Complaints Commission which he said had no regulatory powers. It would have a dual role of promoting high standards of journalism while protecting the role of the individual. The new body would not include serving editors or politicians and it could impose fines and direct the appearance of corrections.

Leveson said participation needed to be universal for the body to be properly funded and succeed in its purpose. Those that declined to be involved would forfeit the right to the in-built arbitration process and therefore could not claim costs of any civil action even if they won because they had refused the cheaper route to justice. Leveson said such a body would not regulate the press.  He did not advocate prior restraint (a point of honour with the British press since Milton’s Areopagitica in 1644). He acknowledged how the important role media plays in society “as a critical witness of events” and accepted that media and journalists have several necessary privileges under the law as “one of the true safeguards of our democracy”. Leveson said his legislation would in fact enshrine “for the first time, a legal duty on the Government to protect the freedom of the press”.

However, the media did not see it that way.  Every newspaper in Britain except the Guardian rushed to denounce Leveson’s key recommendation. Biggest selling paper The Sun said it was “deeply alarmed” by the prospect of “State control of newspapers.” “Such a law could allow State officials to walk into papers like The Sun and censor stories,” it said. The Express also worried about political aprons: “To put politicians in ultimate regulatory control of newspapers and then expect them never to seek to use that power to constrain criticism or scrutiny is to place in them a degree of trust they frankly do not deserve.”

Prime Minister David Cameron – himself implicated by the evidence of the over-close relationship between press and politics – plumped for the press over Leveson. He expressed his reservations over the legislation for the independent process to recognise the new self-regulatory body.  “For the first time we would have crossed the Rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land,” Cameron said. “We should I believe be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press.”

High profile hacking victims such as JK Rowling expressed dismay at Cameron’s speech. “”Having taken David Cameron’s assurances in good faith at the outset of the inquiry he set up, I am merely one among many who feel duped and angry in its wake,” she said. The Hacked Off coalition gained 100,000 signatures calling on the government to comply with Leveson’s findings. Cameron’s coalition partners the Lib Dems are among them, so the matter rolls on, awaiting further political arbitration in the new year.

If Cameron didn’t reckon for the public outcry, then Leveson certainly did. He predicted the victims and the public would not accept the outcome “if the industry did not grasp the opportunity”. Following seven inquiries into the British press in 70 years, it “did not make sense to contemplate an eighth.” Whether short-term interest will prevail is a moot point, as is the longevity of the media’s powers of influence. What is not in doubt is that Brian Leveson has done us all a favour by pointing a strong light on its problems. Maybe then, the media can return to the problems that affect the rest of us.

Previous Woolly Days media personalities of the year

2009 Mark Scott

2010 Julian Assange

2011 Nick Davies and Alan Rusbridger

Business Issues: On 2DayFM and the death of a woman in London.

When looking for culprits in any suspicious death,  it is safe to assume someone running away from the scene, has something to hide. On Saturday, two of Australia’s largest companies,  Coles and Telstra were seen running away from Southern Cross Austereo’s radio station 2Day FM with indecent haste after one of Sydney station’s prank calls apparently led to the suicide death of a nurse in a faraway London four days later.

It is safe to assume that despite their infantile behaviour with the prank, 2Day FM DJs Michael “MC” Christian and Mel Greig never intended to cause harm to any of the participants. After being hiding for several days, the company wheeled them out to tell their stories to Channel’s 7 and 9 tonight. They have both apologised which is more than can be said  of station management and its legal advisers who reviewed and approved the tape before it was played on air. No doubt the justification for not spiking it was the media attention it was going to get for so easily breaching royal security.

Today seems so far from last Wednesday, when two jolly 2Day FM station hosts were conducting the breezy on air patter beloved of  morning FM radio stations across the planet, They told listeners they had hold of the telephone number at King Edward VII Hospital in London where Kate Middleton was  staying. Michael “MC” Christian informed listeners they would “try and get Kate Middleton or even Prince Wills on the line”. They did not tell listeners this was not live.

Michael was to act the role of Prince Charles, Mel was the Queen and another staff member provided the yelps for a royal corgi.  How the hospital did not see beyond this half-baked plot remains a mystery especially when the fake upper class accent of Greig (supposedly the Queen) asks to speak for “Kate, my granddaughter.”

Nurse Jacintha Saldanha  didn’t ask for any further proof of identification (glossing over the fact the Queen is not Kate’s grandmother) and passed the caller onto Kate’s ward. There another nurse was further duped by Mel, Michael and the corgi’s increasing ludicrous vaudeville acting into revealing matters of the patient’s health.

Saldanha may have died of the shame of being so duped and breaching a trust of confidence but no one comes out of this smelling of roses.

This is astonishingly poor risk management by Austereo, particularly as they must have known they were dealing with material of international important given the worldwide prurient interest in the Royal Couple and their future baby.  There is a case the material should be in the public domain, particularly as an expose of poor hospital security protocols but Austereo presumably didn’t think they could make money that way.

So they played it for laughs.  There was some negative reaction in the days that followed but mostly they got away with  it.  Grandfather-to-be Prince Charles joked about it asking newspaper reporters“How do you know I’m not a radio station?  Meanwhile British newspapers gleefully repeated  some of the juicy titbits the second nurse gave to 2Day FM.

Then Saldanha died on Saturday, and no one was laughing. British media  and social networks became holier than thou and launched a firestorm of protest against the station and its two DJs. Mel and Michael were whisked away into hiding and their twitter accounts summarily deleted.

Others fled quickly too with reports of Telstra and Coles speedily ceasing their advertising with 2DayFM (but not Southern Cross Austereo’s other stations).  Telstra told AAP they had suspended “advertising on the station until an investigation into the issue has concluded”. Neither they nor Coles issued media releases to confirm their actions. A check of Coles newsroom boasts “there’s always something new happening at Coles,” but they didn’t see their abandonment of 2DayFM in their moment of crisis newsworthy of a media release.

What Coles did do was put their justification on Facebook.

“We understand Australians are clearly angry and upset by what appear to be tragic consequences of the 2Day FM UK hospital prank,” the retailer wrote.

“We have wanted to let you know we have instructed 2Day FM to remove all Coles group advertising from the station as soon as possible.”

That post brought almost 2000 comments with also half the respondents thinking Coles’ reaction was over the top.

 “It was a funny joke, get over it”, said Anthony Paino before reminding Coles of other things they should boycott. ‘ How about your remove all caged eggs and pork from your shelves,” he said.

Helz Jessop asked would they stop selling alcohol if they killed someone drink driving while Abbi Hamilton was looking for patriotism: “Why not do something proper and remove all imported food and drinks from your aisles?” she said.

Phil Young said it was advertisers like Coles that  made the radio stations “untouchable and unaccountable,” Young said. “Now that Coles have suddenly got a conscience they might look at some of the other stuff they are involved in that causes harm.”

Coles can attempt to take the high ground with their move. But the fact remains they only boycotted it after Saldanha’s death - they presumably thought the content was not objectionable at the time as it was played.

The big companies’ rapid stampede to the exit after the media firestorm on Saturday caused the station to cover their tracks similar to the way it handled stablemate Alan Jones’s “died of shame” comment. A spokeswoman for Austereo, Sandy Kay,let the cat out of the bag when she confirmed to AAP that there would be no advertising on 2Day FM over the weekend.

“We have suspended advertising at least until Monday on that radio station in Sydney out of respect to advertisers until business issues can really be addressed,’ Kay said.  It was respect to advertisers Austereo was worried about, not respect to the dead woman.

And what did Kay mean by “business issues” that could be resolved in a couple of days? Perhaps she was thinking the Jones boycott lasted only a couple of weeks and advertisers were desperate to be associated with their high-rating product no matter how juvenile or crass the consequences.

Mel and Michael were idiots but they were just doing what the station and their advertisers expected of them. As radio DJ Jason ‘Jabba’ Davis said audiences want to be in on the joke.

“As broadcasters we want to make people laugh, but we need to pull it off without dishing out grief to the undeserving,” Davis said.

 

 If you are feeling suicidal, don’t mess around. Call Lifeline on 13 11 14

A new news beast: Newsweek goes digital

In an interview that could easily have passed for Fox talking to Murdoch, the Newsweek Daily Beast Company sat down with its editor-and-chief and founder Tina Brown to discuss the end of print at the venerable magazine Newsweek.  Newsweek fell into the hands of Brown and Beast two years ago but have been unable to resist sliding circulation and rising costs. The last print edition will be December 31.

Brown was on “Newsbeast” this week seated next to the company’s new CEO Baba Shetty as they dissected the reasons why Newsweek was shedding staff and its print publication.  The theme of Brown’s remarks was the need for protection, both of journalists and content. Senior columnist John Avlon was all suited up as he lollypopped his bosses with the opening question phrased as a statement: “So we are taking the bull by the horns, going all digital…”

“We are,” replied Brown.  “We must embrace the future.”  Brown said Newsweek was 80 years old and it was time to start looking at the next 80 years.

 Brown, like many editors before her, conceded defeat for print.  The industry has reached a tipping point and it was no longer a case if but when. And “when” said Brown, might as well be “now”.

“We decided to take away the when and…embrace it, be ready for it.”

Avlon turned the discussion to Shetty with management speak.

“Being proactive not reactive is always a good idea…”

“Yes,” replied Shetty, who unlike Avlon, was dressed down with a jumper and shirt.

The new CEO, a “brand guru”, said Newsweek was a great brand and a powerful media icon but was encumbered by “the form factor” and its economics. Take away issues of physical printing distribution and circulation, Shetty said, by porting the core product to digital would be “incredibly liberating”.

Consumers were moving to digital and advertisers would want to be there to grab these audiences.

Tablet devices, web usage for news, and social news meant it made perfect sense for Newsweek to now go “completely native on digital”.

Brown gave an economic rationale to back it up. She said it cost Newsweek $42m a year to print, manufacture and distribute before you’ve even paid one writer or one intern.

“That’s an enormous albatross,” Brown said.

“We thought it was more important to protect the journalists, the contents, the photographers, the ideas.”

Brown said she wanted a digital Newsweek to focus on the marketplace of ideas.

But how then, would it be different to the Daily Beast, also entirely online, asked Avlon.

Shetty stepped in to say they were “incredibly complementary”.

In four years, the Beast had gone from a start-up to a site with 15 million visitors a month, up a 70 percent since 2011, a huge spike in readership and engagement.

Many were “lean forward, participatory, multiple visits a day,” Shetty said. “The Daily Beast is indispensable many people’s information diet.”

A healthy portion of this traffic was generated each week by Newsweek’s strong original journalism. Newsweek, said Shetty, “a step removed”,  offering more considered, thoughtful, long-form journalism.

Brown said the the Daily Beast and Newsweek spoke to “the same reader in different moods”.  The Daily Beast offered news that was “hot and happening” while Newsweek appealed to the ipad reader on the train home. But, she said, they offered the same sensibility: reflection, context and “a thorough look at what was happening in the world”.

Avlon steered the conversation to the new brand: Newsweek Global.  CEO Shetty called it a terrific new perspective and described who the product would appeal to: “The mobile, highly informed, highly engaged, person very aware of what is happening over the globe.”

He said removing legacy print, meant Newsweek could re-interpret what it could be in pure digital form. Brown said the Daily Beast now appealed to a similar global reader who lived in India, London or Brazil.

Brown said one of the focuses was on “really powerful live events” including ones they had organised like Women in the World. which has an associated foundation which last week launched a campaign for education of girls in Pakistan with Angelina Jolie, hot on the heels of the shooting of 14-year-old education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.

All aspects of the company, said Brown were “now playing together” but print was the anomaly. Getting rid of it went with “enormous regret” as some “incredible brilliant talent” would be leaving the company but it was “the right decision for the company.” Avlon concluded that in terms of content that was “good news for journalists” and an exciting new opportunity” before nodding to the camera to end the interview.

The Daily Beast article that went with the video, gave some statistics to back up the “tipping point” :

There are now 70m tablet users in the US, up from 13m in two years. A further explosion of use is likely, especially as two in five Americans get their news online, a number that is also growing.

“Exiting print is an extremely difficult moment for all of us who love the romance of print and the unique weekly camaraderie of those hectic hours before the close on Friday night,” the article concluded. “But as we head for the 80th anniversary of Newsweek next year we must sustain the journalism that gives the magazine its purpose—and embrace the all-digital future.”

“We’ve got some explaining to do”: The hypocrisy of Shep Smith, Fox and 24 hour news.

It is odd despite the everyday nature of 24 hours news television and the mass public murder/suicide of 9-11, we continue to be shocked when ugly life happens on air. The latest outbreak of outrage occurred today, when Fox News was forced to apologise for showing a suicide following a live car chase from a suburb in Phoenix.

Shep Smith was the on air man providing explanation and context for Fox News viewers in the god voice as the camera rolled when one of his real-life actors went berserk at the end of the chase. Once out of his car, the man staggered around like a hunted deer in the spotlights fleeing from police and the incessant roar of the helicopter above. This might have been the moment to end live coverage but instead the camera kept rolling and Smith struggled with the interpretation for viewers at home. “I would just- he is looking rather erratic, isn’t he?,” said Smith sounding less godlike by the second.

While Smith waited for re-assurance from somewhere, he continued the broadcast with filled pauses of ums and dunnos and oh mys. Meanwhile the cornered man on screen was increasingly out of options. “Well, it looks like he’s a little disoriented or something…” Smith suggested. Desperate to re-assure viewers this could never happen to them, he ascribed a motivation: “it’s always possible he could be on something.” While Smith invented the news, the cameras rolled on.

Utterly helpless and hopeless, the man reached for a gun and killed himself. After a second, the video jerks back to the studio. There is the strange sight of Smith issuing repeated cries “get off” for six seconds. Each call is more urgent than the last, until he shouts one final “GET OFF IT”. He turns away from the camera before they finally break for an ad claiming to be for “mesothelioma families” – Call Now 1-800-444-Meso – but is actually for lawyers.

When he returned Smith didn’t apologise for the fake ad but there was extraordinary grovelling for airing the suicide footage. “We’ve got some explaining to do,” began Smith. With the “we” Smith spread the blame across the organisation. “While we were taking that car chase and showing it to you live, when the guy pulled out of the vehicle, they went on five second delay. So that’s why I didn’t talk for about ten seconds,” he said. “We created a five second delay as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds, that’s what we did with the picture we were showing you. So that if we would see in the studio five seconds before you did, so that if anything went horribly wrong, we’d be able to cut away from it without subjecting you it.” Smith paused before adding “And we really messed up.”

That they were continuing to mess it up was shown in the strange editing error that followed immediately afterwards (36 seconds into the video) that makes a double-voiced Shep say “I am all very sorry”. Shep said the footage “didn’t belong on TV” but he didn’t explain why. Instead he worried about the internal systems that failed to keep the content out. “We took every precaution, we knew how to keep that from being on TV,” he said. “And I personally apologise to you that is what happened. “

Looking to the side rather than direct into the camera, Shep continued: “Sometimes we see a lot of things we don’t let get to you, because it is not time appropriate, it’s insensitive, it’s just wrong. “ He turned back to face the camera. “And that was wrong. And that won’t happen again on my watch and I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll update you on that guy and how that went down tonight on the Fox Report.” Smith repeated he was sorry and then set up his voice for the next story: “Now, the attack on…” It is 24 hour news after all and the show must go on.

Despite Smith’s hopes for “his watch”, a lot of people weren’t going to wait for the Fox report to see “how it went down.” Smith’s patriachal protection of his audience might have worked 10 years ago but not any more. He must have known that someone would grab the footage and it would go viral. Gawker were quick off the mark publishing a link (with caution) to the original footage via Buzzfeed and also to Smith’s on air apology.

The first Gawker commenter picks up an obvious problem: “I’m confused. If they went to 10 delay, how did the suicide end up on screen anyway? I don’t understand Shep’s explanation,” Scout’s Honour said. It was five seconds not ten, but Scout’s point holds up. Wrapped up in his godlike role as narrator, Shep overplayed his hand and took six full second after the death to realise they had “gone too far”. In panic, he takes another five seconds to realise someone has pressed “dump” button out of the broadcast. So we get the strangeness of viewers watching him shouting at some-one to get rid of the delayed footage.

It was a category error on several levels that asked many questions of Fox in particular and 24 hour news in general. Car chases are popular time sinks for the networks and easy to follow once you’ve invested in a helicopter. While one such chase unfolded on air in 2009, Smith quipped on air about the energiser bunny and how he had enjoyed this type of entertainment for many years. So after Buzzfeed, Gawker and others quickly pounced on the mistake, it was surprising to hear several journalists blame the messenger. The Columbia Journalism Review tweeted, “Who’s worse? @FoxNews for airing the suicide, or @BuzzFeed for re-posting the video just in case you missed it the first time?” while Reuters social media editor Anthony De Rosa asked “Why is Buzzfeed sharing a suicide video?”

Al Tomkins in Poynter answered both questions when he picked up on the hypocrisy of the apology. Tomkins wanted to know the guidelines for broadcasting chases. “Are you prepared to air the worst possible outcome that could result from this unfolding story?” he asked the broadcasters. “What outcomes are you not willing to air? Why? How do you know the worst possible outcome will not occur?” It is unlikely any broadcaster has asked themselves too deeply on this or about Tomkins other concerns about car chase coverage: motivations, truth, consequences, tone, safety nets, training and time of day. Broadcasters show them for the same reason they show the 1-800-444-Meso ads: they make money.

Tompkins said he was not an absolutist and there are situations when chase coverage is useful for people near the scene. But his unspoken argument was that they served mostly commercial ends. “These are humans involved, struggling with their lives as we transform them into “stories,” he said. “They are humans, they are not ratings points.” But as long as there are ratings points, we will have to put up with the occasional pious homily about live deaths.

Murdoch’s adventures in China

When Rupert Murdoch took control of The Wall Street Journal in 2008, he collected another less prestigious Dow Jones monthly publication called The Far Eastern Economic Review.  It was as the New York Times called it, an incidental addition to the vast global stable of Murdoch’s News Corp. Murdoch promised editorial independence to all of the Dow Jones stable as part of the price he had to pay for the Journal. But given his reputation, it was no surprise to find there would be a chilling effect whenever a story appeared that affected Murdoch.

The Review’s editor Hugo Restall has hired Australian writer Eric Ellis to write a review of Bruce Dover’s book “Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife.”  The book is a privileged insider’s account of Murdoch’s attempts to woo the Chinese Government in the 19990s and his relationship with third wife Wendi Deng.  The book got a big reception in Asia in 2007 Restall hired Ellis to review the book in January 2008. But by February, Restall had got cold feet and told Ellis the book “looks more like the work of a disgruntled ex-employee rather than an analysis of the business. “

The book was nothing of the sort, as Ellis realised. In his spiked review, Ellis said for a businessman who has left such a mark on the world’s media, Murdoch himself was under-analysed and his personal life off-limits.  It was this reason why the book is of great service: because Dover (now the chief executive of ABC’s Australia Network charged with beaming content into Asia) was the Sun King’s chief courtier in the Forbidden City in a time when China meant everything to the boss.

Dover tells the story from the time Murdoch bought STAR TV in 1993 for $1 billion to the time 10 years later when Dover has been sacked and Murdoch realised he could not replicate the success in China he had elsewhere. By 1993, Murdoch had defeated the British print unions in Wapping, was starting to make big money with BSkyB and the Premier League and expanding his footprint in America. The 23-year-old Richard Li’s STAR TV was a satellite operation that beamed programming to an area that stretched from the Philippines to the Middle East with the potential to reach two-thirds of the world’s population.

But Li could never make money from STAR TV subscriptions as most of its users pirated the unencrypted service. He changed the model to advertising and charged big rates though no one could exactly sure how much of an audience he was aggregating.  Li’s father Li Ka-shung was Hong Kong’s wealthiest businessman and a friend of Deng Xiaoping and he quietened ruffled feathers in Beijing over the fact the uncensored service was available at all in mainland China.  But Xiaoping told Ka-shung the business had to go and Li reluctantly sold to the highest bidder in 1993. Pearson PLC (owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books) offered the same money as News Corp but wanted Ka-shung to stay on in some capacity. Murdoch had no such qualms.

The problem was Li never sought approval from Beijing on the sale. When the Chinese politburo found out who STAR TV’s new owner was, there was deep concern. The Chinese saw only too well how Murdoch intervened in the politics of every other country he had interests in and feared the same would happen to them.  These fears intensified after a major speech Murdoch made in London’s Whitehall Palace.  Murdoch was the main speaker in a night celebrating BSkyB’s new multi-channel offering. With the Internet still in its infancy, Murdoch used the speech to laud the new forms of communications which he said were a threat to “totalitarian regimes everywhere”.  Orwell had got it wrong, Murdoch said, mass communication technologies did not subordinate individuals but liberate them. Telephony and satellite broadcasting, he enthused, made it possible to by-pass state control of information.

Murdoch would later claim he was talking about the recent collapse Communism in Eastern Europe. But the politicians in Beijing had no doubt he was talking about them.  Premier Li Peng was incandescent with rage.  The Butcher of Beijing at Tiananmen was at the height of his powers four years later and he saw Murdoch’s speech as a threat to Chinese sovereignty. Within a month he banned the distribution, installation and use of satellite dishes in China, dashing STAR TV’s expansion plans from the word go.

Murdoch is nothing if not determined and quickly realised the extent of his blunder. He moved to Hong Kong with then wife Anna  and started a long and assiduous campaign of wooing the Chinese leadership to see his position. The problem was that all contact with Zhongnanhai was funnelled through the State Council Information Office and Murdoch was allowed to meet no-one above vice minister.  In 1994 he used the excuse of limited transponder space on the satellite to drop the BBC from STAR TV but he later admitted to biographer William Shawcross it was because the Chinese leaders hated the BBC. Nevertheless it changed nothing and Murdoch remained persona non grata.

The new play was for Murdoch to befriend family members of Deng Xiaoping.  He got Harper Collins to publish Deng’s daughter Deng Rong’s hagiography of her father.  He also feted his disabled eldest son Deng Pufang in an artists’ tour of Australia. The problem was Deng slipped from power in 1994 and new leader Jiang Zemin was not like the emperors of old.  Deng’s children were out of favour and with them any chance of Murdoch patronage. Zemin enforced the crackdown on China’s half a million satellite dishes.

Dover himself was in China by this time trying to negotiate a joint venture with the People’s Daily. This strange alliance with the conservative communist organ was another peace plan and one tacitly approved by the politburo.  The paper was under pressure to reduce its reliance on state handouts and proposed a business news magazine with News Corp. However, once again SCIO were not across the deal and did their utmost to ensure the new joint venture would never get off the ground. It was not the thaw in relations Murdoch needed.

Murdoch next’s ploy was to get into bed with businessman Liu Changle. Changle took half share in the Phoenix TV joint venture with STAR TV. Liu had cultivated several key Beijing decision makers and Murdoch was told by senior leaders this was his only way into China. Phoenix proved popular and shook up the tawdry domestic TV market. But Murdoch hated Phoenix because Changle retained day-to-day control.

Murdoch looked to the new information superhighway for a solution. As Beijing wrestled with control of the internet, Murdoch started a new joint venture with People’s Daily called PDN Xinren. The first product ChinaByte was launched to fanfare in January 1997 and soon became the most popular site in China. But after the tech bubble burst Murdoch lost faith in the product and by April 2001 has sold his foothold in the fastest growing internet market in the world.

Dover documents other manoeuvres such as getting rid of anti-Chinese China correspondent Jonathan Mirsky from the Times Hong Kong bureau. Murdoch had promised The Times editorial independence but he invited the Times editor Peter Stothard on a charm offensive of China. Southard would later spike so many stories from Hong Kong, Mirsky resigned citing Murdoch’s heavy hand. Murdoch also spiked the HarperCollins autobiography of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten on Chinese instructions.  Murdoch competed with great rival Time boss Jerry Levin to fawn over Chinese leaders and promise anything for a toehold in the country. Finally Murdoch made a speech which was a mea culpa for Whitehall where he conceded cultural and social values of a country trumped open communications.

With relations warming slightly, Dover tells the amusing story of when Murdoch met Vice Premier Zhu Rongii in Australia in 1997. Zhu asked Murdoch to tell him the story of his rise to power and the pair had an animated conversation.  At one point Zhu put his hands on Murdoch’s wrists, looked him in the eye and spoke in Mandarin.”I see when you needed to expand your business interests in the US you became a US citizen,” he said. “Maybe you should think of applying for Chinese citizenship to further your business interests in China”. Murdoch blinked when he heard the translation and spluttered a reply. Zhu burst into laughter and said he was joking.

Murdoch did in the end apply for Chinese citizenship – by marrying his young Yale-educated interpreter Wendi Deng. Deng had the language skills but not the contacts in the politburo and the Chinese kept one step ahead of the Murdochs. Just as they cultivated Zemin’s Shanghai clique, the leader was replaced by Hu Jintao. Dover was on the outer now, his boss frustrated by Dover’s inability to penetrate the Great Wall.  Hu closed down STAR TV’s intrusion into the Chinese “grey sector” and insisted China retain control of Chinese television, banning cooperation between local stations and foreign companies.

After 12 years of trying, Murdoch finally admitted he had hit a brick wall in China.  In 2006 he sold his remaining interest in Phoenix and reposition STAR TV towards the Indian market.  But it was not a total failure. Bruce Dover said Murdoch was a major catalyst of change in China both of its media and its attitude to the Internet (which the party wanted to ban entirely).  Phoenix transformed Chinese television with its brash, downmarket programming but control remained in Chinese hands. Dover said in seeking to woo China’s leaders, Murdoch overstepped the mark. “He became too impetuous, too imprudent,” he concluded.

Oympics 2.012: NBCfail and the future

LONDON is currently hosting the last Olympics of the twentieth century as well as the first of the 21^st.  It is the last of the 20^th century because it is the last to be dominated by the century’s most important technology: Television.  London is also the first 21^st century Olympics as it is the first one where the audience has talked back to the organisers and their broadcaster partner proxies. Come Rio in 2016, the Olympics is likely be a very different spectator sport thanks to social media, the power of the Internet and a global movement for more audience power.

Image via Nick Trask

The professional Olympics are huge money and have become partly slave to its sponsors who take ridiculous steps to ward off ambush marketing.  However in London as in previous Olympics, most of the shots are called by the television companies who broadcast the games. They pay an extraordinary amount of money to the International Olympics Committee and local Olympic Committees for the rights.  In America, the largest of the old-style TV hegemonies NBC has had the rights to the summer and winter Olympics since 1988. Four years ago they paid the AOC and IOC $2.2 billion for the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. NBC made the London Games the most-watched Olympics ever by tape-delaying marquee events to air in US prime time, maximising viewers and advertising dollars.

Yet they are likely to lose money despite the large audience they have congregated for advertisers.  NBC lost $223 million on Vancouver. It was on tape-delay despite being in the same timezone as LA. This allowed NBC to maximise ads but it frustrated audiences who for the first time were seeing results in real time through the Internet and social media. For the TV companies who had the content but who could no longer control the message, these external forces had become,as Jeff Jarvis called them, a “gigantic spoiler machine”.

The spoiler machine has been on overdrive in the 2012 Olympics. London is four hours east of the US east coast and also on tape delay and the response has been overwhelmingly negative. NBC refused to show the opening ceremony in real time because it was “too complicated to watch”. An NBC statement defended the indefensible thus: “They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large prime-time audiences that gather together to watch them. We will be providing clips and highlights of each ceremony online so viewers know what to look forward to in primetime on NBC.”

But when it got to actual competition, the “award-winning production team” stuffed up again. They advertised an interview with swimming champion Missy Franklin before showing her gold medal-winning race. These abject failures and others led to Steven Marx creating the “nbcfail” hashtag which went berserk.  But it was UK Independent LA-based journalist Guy Adams who led the most high profile attack with a series of criticisms online which eventually saw NBC call in favours at Twitter to suspend his account.

Adams had tweeted the email address of an NBC executive in charge of Olympics coverage, when he was upset over the quality of that coverage, encouraging others upset to contact the executive.  “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com.Twitter claimed this breached their guidelines as it contained Zenkel’s email. Adams retorted Zenkel’s corporate email address was widely available.  The response to the ban was scathing. Novelist Irvine Welsh said the ban illustrated three tendencies of hegemonic power “1) hates criticism, 2) takes itself seriously 3) no sense of fun.”

NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus claimed they understood the problem but his words betrayed they hadn’t. “We listen. We read. We understand there are people that don’t like what we are doing, but we think that is a very loud minority and the silent majority has been with us for the first six days,” Lazarus said.  Well of course the “silent majority” have been with NBC for a week because they have no choice if they want to watch the Olympics.  Silence is not assent. Not everyone took to Twitter or Facebook to complain but as they realise they can, more will.

As in drugs, the technology to beat the TV companies is changing quickly. The BBC offers a comprehensive ad-free service of the Games courtesy of British TV licence holders and the British taxpayer.  On the Internet they use “geoblocking” based on IP address to ensure only British audiences can view the content.  But just as the Chinese get around geo-blocking to access banned political sites, anyone across the world can view the BBC content by masking their IP address using a virtual private network.  As Melbourne’s Monash University copyright law teacher Rebecca Giblin said broadcast television is a dying industry. As growing number of people are no longer willing to watch TV on someone else’s schedule,” Giblin said. “They want to watch it on their own terms when and where it’s convenient for them.”

With the US delaying the opening ceremony, dodgy sites like VIPBox.TV sprung up to fill the void.  It provides high quality content at a price. As Mashable noted,  VIPBox.TV wants to install a proprietary MPlayer on your computer “which comes with a bunch of crapware that you will want to decline, and it is one of those sites that can turn into a bit of a pop-up monster.” VIPBox.TV are the bootleggers of the 21st century. They flourish only because of prohibition.

Author, editor and futurist Jeff Jarvis said NBCFail showed how the people formerly known as the audience have found a voice to complain about the time-shifting “We in the U.S. are being robbed of the opportunity to share a common experience with the world in a way that was never before possible,” Jarvis said.  Jarvis said the argument that the time-shifting was done to make more money does not stand up. It should have super-served its audience by giving them what they want rather than what Mark Lazarus and Gary Zenkel thought they wanted. “I ask you to imagine what Olympics coverage would look like if Google had acquired the rights,” Jarvis said “It would give us what we want and make billions, I’ll bet.”