Murdoch - Invisible Through Fear

The power of our free and fearless press rests not only on what they are prepared to publish, but also on what they are prepared not to publish. And nothing demonstrates this with greater clarity than this week’s news about the life and current activities of one Rupert Murdoch. Don Rupioni, the capo di tutti i capi of the Murdoch mafiosi, has been visiting London.

Report? On my visit to London? You won't

He is also, according to the New York Times and Washington Post - note, neither of them based in the UK - about to go through his fourth divorce, as he and former model Jerry Hall are apparently about to call time on a marriage that has endured all of six years. The press in the UK, much of which Murdoch owns, has said approximately zip about the split.

The BBC has cautiously told “Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and actress Jerry Hall are getting a divorce, US media report … Representatives for Mr Murdoch and Ms Hall, who wed at a mansion in central London in 2016, are yet to comment … Their split comes as a surprise to those close to the family, according to the New York Times … That newspaper and the Washington Post cited anonymous sources with knowledge of the separation”.

But little press coverage, and suitably caveated. Rupe’s London visit has not even fared that well: his annual parties had been in abeyance during the pandemic, but now they were back, the latest at the Serpentine Gallery. Had the host been a Hollywood A-lister, or even a C- or D-lister, the hacks and snappers would have been out in force, reporting every arrival.

So how many hacks and snappers were at the Serpentine Gallery? None. Nil. Nix. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Not a sausage. Bugger all. So we don’t know who felt the need to pay fealty at the court of Don Rupioni, although it has been reported that alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and most of his cabinet rocked up there, plus the current Labour leadership.

Perhaps some of those attendees mentioned the event on social media? Not as such. Murdoch visits London; no photos record his arrival; no-one tells where he goes or who he meets; no transfer service lets slip that they carried him from the airport; no restaurant visits are reported; no photos are taken of or at his party; no attendee confirms their attendance.

He might have been there. And so might she

This matters: Murdoch has backed or enabled a whole string of Governments around the world, in his native Australia, in the UK, and most infamously in the USA, where he is now a citizen. He has enabled the rise of Bozo, and Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, both utterly unfit for high office.

Moreover, he has, through his media interests, pushed climate change denial, white supremacism, Islamophobia, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, union bashing, Europhobia, and Covid denial (despite being one of the first to get vaccinated). His empire has spread misinformation and disinformation on an epic scale. Yet he is not accountable for the mess he creates.

His press is now covering for Bozo to the extent that it has pulled stories in order to placate the PM and his third wife - with other print media following suit. Yet he is able to command a wall of silence to descend: he was there, but we should take that on trust. We are not permitted to know more.

Rupert Murdoch is the ultimate expression of the asymmetrical relationship between our free and fearless press and the rest of society: he is allowed anonymity, privacy, discretion, secrecy even. All of those attributes are not given by his part of the press, or indeed most of the rest of the press, to those they target, no matter how rich, how apparently powerful they are.

Tom Watson was ridiculed when he characterised the Murdoch empire as a mafia operation. He keeps being proved right: so many people keeping quiet and seeing nothing does not come about by coincidence. We have here a media baron who rules by fear. So many politicians - and not just Tories - too frightened to admit they were there. Scared of potential reprisals.

We used to laugh at countries in the grip of mafia organisations. There seems less humour value now that the boot is so firmly on the other foot.

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