It’s hard being a newspaperman. Especially here in Los Angeles where a once world-class newspaper seems determined to budget cut itself to death. But at least that newspaper is populated by honest newspapermen seeking to do what newspapermen do best…tell people the things they need to know to go on living in a democracy.
My father was a newspaperman. I am a newspaperman. I’ve spent my life in newspapers and have been fortunate to be associated with some of the best in California…and the world. And my newspaperman’s heart is sickened by what it sees happening across the water. I can only imagine what my father would have thought of it.
Rupert Murdoch is a newspaperman. Or he was.
Make no mistake about it. He may be referred to as a media mogul or some such in news reports. It may be reported that the BSkyB deal in Britain and his Fox Network’s relations with the FCC in this country are more important to him than any of his newspapers. You will note that most of these reports come from media other than newspapers and you are not to believe any of them. Rupert Murdoch calls himself a newspaperman. And his proudest possessions are newspapers.
Rupert Murdoch was a newspaperman. Once.
Now, it’s hard to say what he was. Of course it’s hard to stomach some of the newspapers he owns…the late, unlamented News of the World, The Sun in Britain and the New York Post in this country. They deal in sleaze, but at least…or so we thought…honest sleaze. But the Times of London and The Wall Street Journal…these are newspapers of record in their countries. You might not agree with the political leanings of their editorial pages but at least you could trust them for the honesty of their journalistic content.
Until now.
We’ve known about the News of the World’s shenanigans for some time. We’ve even seen people go to jail for them. And always…possibly with a wink and a nod…we’ve accepted News Corp.’s protestations that their higher executives, including Rupert Murdoch, didn’t know anything about them. But now…well, where does it end? We know now that it wasn’t just the News of the World, but the Sunday Times, as well, that used these blatantly illegal tactics to get their stories. We learn, also, that the current head of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, may have countenanced such practices as head of News International. What sort of a world has it come to be in which the word of The Wall Street Journal can’t be trusted? What sort of world is it when someone who may have countenanced criminality in the name of journalism has come to sit at its head?
Rupert Murdoch may be a newspaperman. But he is not a journalist. He hasn’t the heart of a journalist, but of a two-bit grifter who will do anything for a buck. His soul is stained, not by printer’s ink, but the vile green of a man for whom money is everything and integrity is nothing.
Come to think of it…Rupert Murdoch isn’t a newspaperman, after all.
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