LONDON -- This city has been the November host of a global tyrant, on whose rampages the sun never sets. His
name is not George Bush but Rupert Murdoch.
Bush, acknowledged as their legitimately elected leader by at least some of his fellow citizens, presents so
frail a political physique that it seems faintly ludicrous to impose on him even the conventional honorific, "leader of the
free world," let alone the robust dignity of "tyrant."
The president's arrival in the United Kingdom was preceded by interviews with British newspapers in which he
paid humble respect to those democratic traditions permitting Britons to assemble in vast numbers and to cover him with
ridicule and abuse. He allowed himself to be scheduled for a possibly humiliating session with relatives of British
soldiers killed in Iraq.
The entire state visit, the first by an American president since Woodrow Wilson visited these shores in 1918,
has been depicted in virtually every newspaper as a vast political embarrassment to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who issued
it many months ago when he supposed that the two could preen over a successful operation in Iraq. It most certainly
represents a low point in the esteem here for the United States, at least as a nation led by a man regarded by a third of
all Britons as perilously ignorant, running neck and neck with North Korea's Kim Jong Il as a threat to world peace.
How different has been the brief tour of his British assets by Rupert Murdoch, on hand to crush a rising by
some shareholders in British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB) claiming that the company was being run by Murdoch as a private
fiefdom in a manner injurious to their interests.
At BskyB's annual general meeting on Friday, Nov. 14, Murdoch conducted himself in a manner that would have won
the approval of Vlad the Impaler, snarling at one dissident that if he didn't like it, he should sell his shares, and
bickering openly with BskyB's chief executive, his son James. Investors irked by a share price dead in the water for six
years and virtually nothing offered in the way of dividends, did make their views clear. Murdoch was quoted by the
Guardian's man Jeremy Warner as complaining to his wife at the end of the session that some had been "bloody insulting" and
"seriously nasty," but he carried the day, at least for now.
The global tyrant still had time that Friday to grant an interview to the BBC in which he placed Tony Blair on
notice that the loyalty of Murdoch's newspapers was not to be taken for granted.
Referring to himself respectfully in the first person plural, Murdoch was kind enough to intimate that "we will
not quickly forget the courage of Tony Blair" but then made haste to emphasize that he also enjoys friendly relations with
the new Tory leader Michael Howard.
On the mind of the global pirate is a topic that one would have thought he would have had scant interest,
namely national sovereignty. Murdoch professed himself exercised by the matter of the EU constitution. Slipping on the
mantle of Britishness, Murdoch pronounced that "I don't like the idea of any more abdication of our sovereignty in economic
affairs or anything else."
The Guardian found this altogether too brazen and editorialized the following Monday that "Rupert Murdoch is no
more British than George W. Bush. Once upon a time, it's true, he was an Australian with Scottish antecedents. But some
time ago he came to the view that his citizenship was an inconvenience and resolved to change it for an American passport.
He does not live in this country, and it is not clear that he is entitled to use 'we' in any meaningful sense of shared
endeavor. To be lectured on sovereignty by someone who junked his own citizenship for commercial advantage is an irony to
which Mr. Murdoch is evidently blind."
Then the Guardian got a bit rougher: "Readers have to be put on notice that the view expressed in Murdoch
titles have not been freely arrived at on the basis of normal journalistic considerations."
For a very extended gloss on what the Guardian editorialist was driving at we can turn to "The Murdoch
Archipelago" (just published by Simon and Schuster in the U.K.), by Bruce Page, a distinguished, Australian-born journalist
who has lived and worked in England for many years, perhaps best known for his work leading the Insight team at the
(pre-Murdoch) London Sunday Times.
Page's detailed and compelling case, based on his investigation of Murdoch's operations in Australia, Britain,
the United States and the Chinese People's Republic, amounts to this: As an international operator, Murdoch offers his
target governments a privatized version of a state propaganda service, manipulated without scruple and with no regard for
truth. His price takes the form of vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief, monopoly markets and so
forth. The propaganda is undertaken with the utmost cynicism, whether it's the stentorian fake populism and soft porn in
the U.K.'s Sun and News of the World, or shameless bootlicking of the butchers of Tiananmen Square.
There was something so megalomanic about Murdoch's interview with the BBC that one wonders hopefully whether it
has all gone to his head and soon he'll be gnawing the carpet like other moguls before him. Probably not. Murdoch is too
focused a predator for the wasteful extravagances of insanity, and he's perhaps a shade more careful than his fellow media
czar, Conrad Black, now evicted from control of his empire because sufficiently powerful stockholders took a dim view of
Black and colleagues easing $73.7 million out of Hallinger under the guise of non-competition fees.
The Sun won a White House interview with George Bush, probably as a consequence of desperate pleading from 10
Downing Street to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Robert Thomson, editor of The (Murdoch-owned) London Times was invited to meet
Bush at the White House Sunday night, two days before Bush's flight to London but, so the Financial Times later reported,
had to send Regrets. He'd already promised to attend a party in London hosted by Murdoch, the annual gathering of his top
70 global executives. As the FT asked, " ... well, what would you do?"
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking
newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists,
visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
