Among those lining up to hear evidence from Rupert and James Murdoch was Harold Evans – an editor under Rupert Murdoch when he acquired The Times and the Sunday Times in 1981. It wasn’t the happiest of experiences for either.
Also keen to take up a ring-side seat was Michael Dobbs, the former Conservative Central Office strategist turned novelist who created the amoral, Machiavellian Prime Minister Francis Urquhart in House of Cards.
In Australia, all the major television stations gave live coverage of the Murdochs’ evidence – despite it being in the middle of the night,
Oz-time.
All, that is, except Network Ten which along with China’s own rolling news channel CCTV and Russia Today thought – with considerable justification, perhaps – it would be too boring for viewers. Network Ten, incidentally, is run by James Murdoch’s older brother, Lachlan.
Twitter was ever-present during both the CMS committee hearing and that of the Home
Affairs Select Committee nearby which heard from various past and present employees of Scotland Yard.
At one point, Twitter was handling at least 40 tweets per second.
A great many of those were apparently being read by CMS committee member Tom Watson who, as soon as his turn to talk and ask questions ended, conspicuously turned his attention back to his smartphone. The social media-savvy Labour MP is sometimes said to spend more time in cyberspace than real life.
Even the anarcho-comics or attention-seeking idiots who disrupted the Murdochs’ mea culpa – sorry, evidence – with a foam pie seems to have tweeted his intentions almost immediately beforehand. But no one present appears to have been following him.
Scrutiny of the Murdoch family’s stewardship of News Corporation – with companies such as Bloomberg (which might be thought to have a partisan interest) predicting the imminent retirement of Rupert – prompted thoughts of a forgotten Australian media dynasty, the Fairfax clan.
Back in the mid-1980s, when the Sydney Morning Herald was up for grabs after years of less than stellar management, this was doing the rounds. Q: How do you start a small to medium-sized business? A: You give a big one to Warwick Fairfax. Will the same joke be dusted off with James Murdoch’s name replacing Warwick’s after this week?
Although the Murdochs have brought modest, even disappointing, dividends to their shareholders – who include the Church of England – it has usually been rash to write off Rupert. He may be 80 but he has two young children, a devoted and formidable wife dedicated to keeping him well… and his mother’s genes. Dame Elizabeth is apparently still sharp at nearly 103.
Someone who rivals Tom Watson for time spent communing in the digital world is Alastair Campbell who was quick to register mock pride when Rupert Murdoch appeared to confuse the former Labour Party communications chief with his former boss when the subject of Tony Blair’s visit to a News Corp summit in their secret headquarters in a dormant south sea island volcano – or perhaps it was just a luxury resort – in 1994 came up. Mr Campbell was quick to remind his many followers “they invited us”. Coincidentally, earlier that same day former Labour leader Neil Kinnock – whose anger at the visit all those years ago has already been recorded for posterity by Alastair Campbell – said he thought that incident contributed to the growing hubris and arrogance of News International in its dealings with the party.
Meanwhile, the ubiquitous, ever fast to respond Mr Campbell cannot have failed to notice something of a narrative that appears to be taking shape over at the Chilcot inquiry.
This diary has long held the – probably unworthy and unduly cynical – notion that while inquiries can be a public good bringing many insights, recommendations and reforms in their wake, they are equally an opportunity for members of the permanent government, or establishment, in Whitehall to firewall themselves from blame and responsibility once the elected politicians of the day have moved on. Nevertheless, someone expendable must usually be offered up to take the blame.
Last May, we heard evidence from intelligence officer Major General Michael Laurie, whom Mr Campbell said he had never even met or spoken to, that cast scorn on his “dodgy dossier” foreword. Last week, we heard from an unnamed member of MI6 – the organisation that rubber-stamped Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq – that if its officers had a fault then it was that they had just been too eager to please their political masters but for the best possible reasons.
Their mitigation appears to be that, in their eagerness to please Tony Blair, they were somewhat bamboozled by the force of Mr Campbell’s personality who was “somewhat of an unguided missile” prone to “rushes of blood to the head” in the “febrile” atmosphere leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The witness, referred to as “SIS2”, told the Chilcot inquiry: “We found Alastair Campbell, I think, an enthusiastic individual, but also somewhat of an unguided missile. We also, I think, suffered from his propensity to have rushes of blood to the head and pass various stories and information to journalists without appropriate prior consultation.
“That’s not to say that we didn’t engage to the extent that we could, and I think that Alastair Campbell found us a useful organisation to work with, simply because SIS was actually an organisation that was very focused on delivery.
“The pressure to generate results, I fear, did lead to the cutting of corners.
I think perhaps SIS was at that point guilty of flying a bit too close to
the sun.”
