For more than four decades I have been around Rupert Murdoch. In that time he employed me in both London and New York, invested in my business ideas and ultimately fired me.
It was always rock ’n’ roll around Rupert and that’s the way I liked it. So you would have thought that when the BBC made its current three-part documentary on him, it might have come to me for my views.
Oh no. I presume it didn’t want to take the risk I might say something warm and supportive. It did, however, film Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun’s political columnist, for hours on end. He was warm and supportive. But all that was left on the cutting room floor. The BBC only wanted the bile. Instead, it concentrated its filming on the usual suspects. Hugh ‘mine will be a blow job’ Grant, Max ‘mine will be a painful one across the buttocks’ Mosley and Tom ‘mine will be a fantasy paedophile ring’ Watson.
A credited researcher on the doco was Roy Greenslade, whose claim to fame is that when he edited the Daily Mirror he offered a £1 million prize in a Spot the Ball competition, with one drawback… there was no ball. It was a con to attract readers and he sanctioned it appearing in the paper. Instead of being jailed for fraud, he became, as you would expect, a Guardian columnist and a media professor at City University. Remember that, next time he’s pissing from the top of the pyramids on tabloid excesses.
It’s true that phone hacking is a stain on the Murdoch record. It’s personal to me. I was hacked seven times, and Milly Dowler went to school literally 150 yards from where I live. But nobody can seriously believe Murdoch knew of the criminality at the News of the World.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in