"I was betrayed"

News Corp Minorities Outraged

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud, News Corp's second-largest shareholder after Murdoch, is demanding that those responsible be found and investigated. He told the BBC: "I will have no dealings with a company that employs people who have the slightest doubt about their integrity."

Opinion

Aram Gabrelyanov, CEO of News Media Publishing House. “The News of the World story is not so much the result of Murdoch’s actions as it is of general corruption in England. The head of Scotland Yard covers for the prime minister, and the prime minister covers for the tabloid manager. LifeNews has informants, and paid ones too. But we do not use wiretapping. This is a direct violation of the law. In Russia, there is not such intense competition between tabloids as in England. So there is no need to take extreme measures.”

News Corp

Media corporation. Largest shareholders: Rupert Murdoch (39.73% of voting shares), Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud (7.04% of voting shares). Capitalization – $41.84 billion. Financial indicators (nine months of the financial year ended March 31, 2011): revenue – $24.44 billion, net profit – $2.17 billion.

"This is the most humiliating day of my career," Murdoch said at a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday. He, his son James, and former CEO of News Corp's British newspaper division Rebekah Brooks (who was arrested and released on bail) were called to a public hearing on the scandal surrounding the News of the World (NOTW). The tabloid had previously been suspected of wiretapping private phones and bribing the police, but two weeks ago it was revealed that, on NOTW's orders, a private detective had hacked the voicemail of a missing 13-year-old girl in order to gather more hot facts. The British are outraged. But Murdoch insists that he knew nothing. The police had already investigated NOTW's activities in 2007. The suspicions were the same. At that time, Parliament found no grounds for prosecuting News Corp's top managers, Murdoch recalled this time. According to him, even the lawyers from Harbottle and Lewis, hired by News Corp to check the NOTW documents, assured the company that there was no risk of being accused of illegal actions. But this time he had to repent: “I am very ashamed, I was betrayed by people I trusted, my employees.” But they do not really believe him. Everyone is used to the fact that Murdoch and his newspapers are inseparable. “Do you want to know what is in Murdoch’s head? Read the editorial columns of The Sun and the New York Post, he is effectively the editor-in-chief of these newspapers,” former editor of The Sunday Times Andrew Neil said at parliamentary hearings in 2007. In his tabloids, Murdoch is king and god, agreed Professor of Journalism at London’s City University Roy Greenslade, and he is only prepared to enter into discussions with the editors of reputable publications like The Wall Street Journal (The Wall Street Journal is one of the founders of the Vedomosti newspaper.)

The businessman lives for his empire, even on weekends he is always on the phone, discussing the latest events with his editors. He is 80 years old, he looks his age. But he wants to know everything and literally hunts for news, his employees say, and he himself constantly shares it with his newspapers. One of the employees called him a "walking elite information service". Murdoch himself, however, claims that in the last couple of years he has stopped delving into the details of the life of his tabloids, he is more interested in the solid journalism of The Wall Street Journal.

"entrepreneurship is in my blood"

Murdoch was fascinated by journalism as a child: “I would watch my father hand in the paper on Saturdays. From then on, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.” His father, Keith Murdoch, a famous war correspondent, had a successful career after the First World War. He became the chief executive of the Herald and Weekly Times Group, a major publishing company in Australia, and also owned three small local newspapers.

His father doubted his son's abilities and taught Rupert discipline from childhood: at the age of seven, he was sent to a school with basic military training. During the holidays, he slept not in his childhood bedroom, but in a special tree house. But Rupert's mother was not stingy with affection; she taught her son literature and music. Later, she admitted to journalists: even after his father's death, Rupert constantly proved that he was worthy of his respect. Later, Murdoch also tempered the character of his eldest son Lachlan, publicly humiliating and bullying him.

But at university, Rupert went wild. It was later that he became an ardent champion of the free market economy, and as a student he got over socialism, and a bust of Lenin stood in a place of honor in his room. He spent money on cards and published an underground newspaper.

He got his first experience as a reporter during those same years, during an internship at the London tabloid The Daily Express. In the early 1960s, this newspaper had the largest circulation in the world, The Times wrote. Its owner, Lord Beaverbrook, used a simple combination: more sex and gossip, an easy writing style and playful design. Murdoch later successfully applied and developed this formula for mass popularity in his tabloids.

Murdoch's career did not go smoothly - in 1952, his father died suddenly. The Herald and Weekly Times refused to pay the family any compensation, and the Murdoch family newspapers went to his father's former colleague. Rupert was furious. Only two years later he was able to get these newspapers back and immediately unleashed a price war with the Herald and Weekly Times. A few years later, he bought the group for $6.1 billion. The family had their revenge.

"This entrepreneurial spirit is in my blood. You could say I'm a gambler. I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity, my father with his Scottish roots and a huge sense of duty, and my maternal grandfather, who always had debt problems because of gambling," the businessman confided to Esquire several years ago.

His persistent desire to become a major player in the global media market, to conquer the world, is also a family trait, part of the Australian character. “Australia is a huge, harsh continent, populated by a bunch of migrants from Europe, homesick. They are constantly trying to prove their worth to the whole world,” the magnate explained to journalists.

But his love for his homeland did not stop him from changing his Australian citizenship to American in the interests of business. His family was shocked.

"great bad

Human"

Murdoch has been called many things: "the master of news," "the antichrist," "the newspaper pimp." He is no stranger to public censure. When he was negotiating the purchase of Dow Jones, all of America was seething and protesting against the takeover of The Wall Street Journal by the creator of cheap tabloids. "I was treated as if I were some kind of tyrant who was committing genocide against an entire nation," the businessman later shared.

Even the businessman's enemies acknowledge his influence and talent. Murdoch is probably the most successful media owner and manager in history, his long-time adversary, former Telegraph Group chairman Conrad Black, wrote in a column in the Financial Times recently.

News Corp controls about 39% of the newspaper market in the UK, about 60% of the print media market in Australia, owns one of the most influential cable channels in the US – Fox News, TV channels all over Europe, it has assets in China and Russia, etc., etc. His empire is the second largest in terms of turnover among media companies after Disney. Murdoch, through a family trust fund, controls 40% of the shares of this company. He is one of the richest people on the planet – in March, Forbes estimated his fortune at $7.6 billion.

Where does such wealth and influence come from? “I am happy and nimble,” he believes. Murdoch’s first national newspaper in the US was the tabloid Star, which at first could not get going, the newspaper was losing money, the businessman told The Times in 1988. And one day, completely by chance, it published the “true story” of Elvis Presley on the day of the death of the king of rock and roll, the circulation was instantly sold out, and the newspaper’s audience grew several times after that.

But Murdoch has had his share of failures. He was forced to close the Australian tabloid Post, which was failing to turn a profit, and lost $150 million. In 2004, he failed to stop his opponent Jonn Malone from buying a large stake in the empire and was later forced to swap it for a stake in DirecTV. In 2005, he paid $580 million for MySpace and recently sold it for $35 million. In 2007, he bought Dow Jones for $5.6 billion, and two years later News Corp halved the value of his asset.

But it is impossible to deny Murdoch's fearlessness, foresight, and experience in capturing the media market, writes Black. Unlike other modern media empires of Ted Turner or Black, Murdoch's empire is constantly expanding, his biographer Michael Wolff pointed out and explained: Rupert completely lacks the natural human need to please. He is not embarrassed by the dirty headlines of his tabloids, and he does not care if a published article offends someone personally. "I do not seek recognition, and it is impossible to shut up critics. When you seriously change the situation, you always make enemies. I am proud of mine," Murdoch once said.

But the magnate is unlikely to be proud of his allies. He is loyal only to his company and changes allies like gloves, shamelessly using politicians, elevating them or publicly flogging them. Murdoch even started his first respectable publication, The Australian, to gain political weight. The newspaper became profitable only 20 years after its appearance in 1964, but its support was a decisive factor in the victory of the Labor Party candidate Edward Whitlam in the 1972 local elections. This did not prevent Murdoch from quarreling with the politician and opposing him in the next election. In the same way, his British newspapers “forgot” about their conservative views and helped the Laborite Tony Blair get the post of Prime Minister in 1997. Blair did not remain in debt and passed a bill weakening control over foreign investment in the media, which was very necessary for Murdoch. And then The Sun called Blair “the most dangerous man in Britain” – and all because the prime minister talked about the country’s possible transition to the euro, while the tycoon is a staunch opponent of a united Europe. Now Murdoch is at war with US President Barack Obama, directly calling him a worthless chatterbox, although back in 2009 he considered the newly-minted president “a very pragmatic, undoubtedly ambitious, but a very decent man.” Obama also does not skimp on “compliments” for Fox News, which has taken an openly anti-government position.

Murdoch has never hidden his political views or the fact that his newspapers promote his ideas. “Our news texts are objective, and the comments, the editorials, of course, express quite conservative views. And that’s right. The reader should have a choice. I don’t force anyone to buy our newspapers,” he told Bloomberg two years ago.

That Murdoch is no angel and does not always play by the rules has long been known. In 1984, during the attempted takeover of Warner Communication, three New York Post reporters were instructed to dig under Warner CEO Steve Ross – not to write an article, but to help Murdoch’s lawyers put the squeeze on Ross, The New York Times wrote. In 1998, he ordered his publishing division not to print the memoirs of Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, because he was unpopular with the Chinese authorities, where Murdoch had his own interests. “Yes, maybe I was wrong,” Murdoch admitted. “It was a long career, and none of us are innocent young ladies.” There was also a loan from a business partner, received in exchange for support for Jimmy Carter (Murdoch never admitted this), the use of police to disperse striking newspaper printing workers in London in 1986-1987. etc. Black compares the magnate to Napoleon Bonaparte – “a great bad man” whose greatness and depravity cannot be questioned. The British have long turned a blind eye to Murdoch’s misdeeds, he writes, and this cowardice of society has allowed the magnate to gain such power.

Cleaner

After the scandal, Murdoch closed NOTW almost immediately. He personally apologized to the parents of the missing girl, to all the British people, placing ads in all the major newspapers. So far, it hasn’t helped. Under pressure from politicians, News Corp has already abandoned the takeover of BSkyB, one of the most important deals in its history. Murdoch expected that by buying out the remaining shares of BSkyB (he currently controls 39% of the company’s shares), he would gain full access to the gigantic flow of money that the company earns thanks to years of investment in infrastructure. But that’s not the main thing: he planned to create a single European television company on the basis of BSkyB and get another powerful resource of influence. Murdoch’s position as head of the BSkyB board of directors was called into question. The collapse of the deal also had a negative impact on the reputation of his son James, who runs the European part of News Corp. The deal was his brainchild and was supposed to prove the ambitions of the heir to the empire. In order to hush up the scandal, Murdoch sacrificed his loyal supporters. Brooks, his favorite, whom he treated almost like a daughter and who could always make him laugh, resigned, according to News Corp. employees. The mogul says he still trusts Brooks completely.

Since the scandal began, News Corp shares have fallen by 17.46%. What does not add to investors' optimism is that following the British police, the FBI has opened an investigation, interested in information about Murdoch's newspapers possibly wiretapping victims of the September 11 terrorist attack. And also that British politicians are calling for Murdoch's empire to be divided into pieces. Such a concentration of power in one hand is dangerous for society, the leader of the British Labour Party, Ed Miliband, said recently. Murdoch is showered with curses, and during parliamentary hearings, a plate of shaving foam was thrown at him. It is simply physically difficult for him to justify himself to parliamentarians. He turned pale before our eyes and sometimes thought about his answers for so long that it seemed he forgot about them altogether. Is he crushed? No way, Murdoch is raring to go and clearly considers himself innocent of this entire scandal. He has no intention of stepping down as News Corp CEO, he told MPs: "Those who betrayed me, betrayed the company, must pay. I don't know who they are or at what level. And I am the best person to clean up this mess." Investors loved the audacity - News Corp shares rose 5.51% on Tuesday. It's too early to write off the emperor.

Rupert Murdoch: "I am very ashamed"