In 2007, in a book about the Australian media, I confidently predicted: “Rupert Murdoch is an old man and will be dead soon. Many things may happen to media empires when the emperors have gone.” On any reasonable definition of “soon” I was badly wrong. The old man is still with us, though now taking a giant step back, despite his insistence that he will remain ubiquitous.
But my larger point – that we were entering a post-colonial period in media – was correct. Social media and digital publication altered the way that power worked.
A world in which anyone can publish has proved exciting and truly frightening for the same reason – views once invisible are now part of public debate.
Digital and social media could have been powerful forces of democratisation.
In some ways, they have been. It is much easier to attack Rupert Murdoch in public now than it used to be. Ownership of a printing press no longer allows you to drown out other voices.
But alongside that, the damage to democratic and social forms is obvious. And the Murdoch organisation, more than any other, has amplified that damage. At least in the US, this may be the old man’s main legacy. It may be what history remembers him for.
So far as we can discern a consistent political message, Murdoch is not so much a conservative as a libertarian – but with large dollops of hypocrisy.
In his retirement statement, he protests his commitment to truth. Yet, as I have written previously, he has admitted that his news empire knowingly lied.
He says that a commitment to freedom of speech is the “cause” of three generations of his family.
Yet Lachlan Murdoch was stung enough to try to sue a tiny online publication, Crikey, into silence when it published a piece accusing his family of being “unindicted co-conspirators” in the US Capitol riots. (Lachlan dropped the action and was made to pay costs).
The emperor has hung on, longer than I thought he would, proving his deep and instinctive understanding of how media works – even as the industry was turned on its head.
But he is a diminished figure.
When I was teaching journalism full-time, I would periodically take students on tours of the Herald Sun newsroom.
The young people were excited, a little frightened even. They expected to see Andrew Bolt in his lair.
But they discovered that Bolt’s office was mostly empty, his presence not much felt on the newsroom floor. What the journalists they met cared about most deeply was sport.
Out of the bosses’ hearing, many would confess embarrassment about News Corporation’s loopier campaigns against institutions and individuals. They knew they detracted from what their ageing audiences most wanted: sport and stories from the suburbs, including warring neighbours, puppies, crime and human interest.
This is the two-sided nature of the Murdoch empire. On the one hand, it is a conventional media organisation with sharp news instincts.
On the other it is a political organisation dominated by a man who is not, by any means, a powerful political thinker.
As the scholar Rodney Tiffen wrote in his book about Murdoch, when Rupert was active on Twitter, the main revelation was the banality of his political thought.
We can see it again in his retirement statement. Along with the mockable words about freedom of speech and truth, he talks about “elites” who have “open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.”
And what does he mean by elite? In the Murdoch world, academics who criticise him are “elite”. Writers of progressive books are elite. Leftwingers are elite.
But Lachlan, the product of a Princeton education and the beneficiary of inherited wealth, is not.
For Murdoch, “elite” means anyone with voice and cultural power with whom he does not agree.
I am reminded of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less … The question is which is to be master – that’s all.’
In Australia the Murdoch tabloids are no longer clearly that master. As shown by several pieces of research, there is a now a big three of Australian media – News Corporation, the ABC and Nine. None of these is clearly dominant, but the Murdoch tabloids are the least trusted outlets.
It has been decades since a News Corporation campaign could directly swing votes.
But that is not the only way influence operates. The Murdoch commentators articulate the arguments of the right, giving them succour and increasing their rhetorical power. Meanwhile, the left spends too much time and energy in furious reaction, moulding itself in the reverse image of News Corporation culture.
The result is an anaemic public life. We lack original thinkers on both sides of politics.
And so, to quote Humpty Dumpty, who is to be master?
The internal life of Lachlan Murdoch remains opaque, despite a recent biography.
If he cares for anything else other than business success and his family, it is hard to discern. Some say he is not political, others that he is more rightwing than his father.
But it seems unlikely that he will share his father’s deep attachment to loss-making assets such as The Australian newspaper.
Meanwhile, the Murdoch retirement highlights that we may now be entering another era in media. Artificial intelligence will change almost everything.
And we may be past the point of peak social media, at least so far as news content is concerned.
Young Australians are becoming more cautious about getting their news from social media, according to the latest Digital News Report from the University of Canberra. Those in gen Z using social media as their main source of news (46%) fell by eight percentage points from 2021. There is even a tiny return to reading news in print form.
There could be an opportunity coming – for media organisations to return to quality and depth. To rediscover the sense of mission. To become, in the true meaning of the word, elite.
I doubt if the Murdoch organisation, with its internal contradictions and deficit of public trust, can easily navigate that wave.
But I have been wrong before.
