My Job Interview With Rupert Murdoch

A winter of discontent, some thirty years ago. I was searching for a new job, trying to move from TV publicity work back into journalism. Rupert Murdoch had just bought the New York Post and it occurred to me that he'd probably be looking for a new television critic. The guy the paper employed prior to Murdoch's $30 million purchase had been writing about broadcasting since the days when folks tuned in radio signals with crystal diodes and a cat's whisker.

I wrote and called Murdoch's office. No reply. Sent over some writing samples. Nothing. Then another job prospect appeared at a bigger network, but still in publicity. I telephoned once more and mentioned the other job. This time, apparently, I had appealed to Murdoch's competitive spirit. His secretary called back. Could I come see Mr. Murdoch at 3 p.m. Tuesday?

Wearing my one good suit, a heavy woolen, dark pinstripe number that was sweat-inducing even in the frigid depths of February, I took a cab to the Post's headquarters. In those days they were still in downtown Manhattan on South Street, near the Seaport. Emerging from the elevator, I was ushered into Murdoch's office. He had just taken over as publisher - having bought out the redoubtable Dorothy "Dolly" Schiff, who had owned the paper since 1939 - and hadn't had the time to redecorate her former workspace.

Mrs. Schiff was so enamored of Franklin D. Roosevelt (there were rumors of an affair), she had the room designed as an exact replica of FDR's Oval Office. The walls were painted a pastel shade with a white icing-like, filigreed trim. I felt as if I had just walked inside an enormous Russell Stover Candy Easter egg, the kind my Dad used to sell in his drugstore.

Murdoch and I spoke for about fifteen minutes or so. I don't recall much about what was said, but I do remember his charm and the lack of pretension so many others describe.

He sent me down to the city room to meet one of his senior editors. As I sat cooling my heels, a disheveled, middle-aged reporter finally stopped in front of me and asked, "Hey, you Australian?"

"No," I replied.

"Too bad."

And that was that. I'd been expertly good cop-bad copped, without even a shrimp to hurl on the barbie in my defense. Even then, Murdoch was well-known for loading new acquisitions with mates from his papers Down Under - employees well-versed in transforming respectable publications into sensational, "Headless Body in Topless Bar" tabloids.

Three decades after our fleeting encounter and the dashing of my brilliant, budding career as a TV critic, Murdoch's global media and entertainment empire, News Corp., has expanded to include the Times of London (among 175 other newspapers), the Weekly Standard, 20th Century Fox, Fox TV, Fox News Channel, Fox Sports, FX, Asia's Star TV, HarperCollins, MySpace.com and now, purchased last month for $5 billion, The Wall Street Journal.

Among other motives, his buyout of the Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, is seen as a way to enhance next month's launch of the new Fox Business Network, which presumably will rely heavily on the Journal's reporting and reputation to establish its own credibility and build viewership.

Over the last weeks, much has been written as to whether or not Murdoch will maintain the Journal's editorial integrity and its reputation for superlative, investigative business reporting. To that end, a five-member board has been named to buffer the staff from interference. Whether they'll succeed is in doubt, although Murdoch has said he'll keep his mitts off while adding financial resources to beef up the Journal's reportage.

Like those Australian chums at the New York Post, it's the people Murdoch names to positions as editors and deputy editors who will bear watching. His track record is like that of Vice President Cheney, as described in the "Angler" series of articles The Washington Post published this summer: "His genius," a former Cheney aide told the Post's reporters, is that "he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places and then trusts them to make ... decisions that comport with his overall vision."

Murdoch does much the same thing, but the content he dictates often is as much a function of business expedience as conservative politics. Thus, his support of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair (an aide to Blair's first communications director called Murdoch "the 24th member" of the British cabinet). And a China policy that saw him publish a worshipful biography of Deng Xiaoping - by Deng's daughter - and the removal of BBC world news, which had been critical of China, from the Star TV satellite to protect his Chinese media interests (which include a large investment in the China Broadband Capital Partners fund). Not to mention the right-wing ideology of Fox News, which is as much a function of ratings as ravings.

On a wider and potentially far more destructive scale, the Murdoch purchase of the Journal can be seen as yet another defeat in the fight to preserve independent, diverse voices in journalism; one more consolidation of news power that increasingly restricts those in charge of our mass media to a half-dozen or so global corporations. The argument that consolidation is not a problem because cyberspace offers hundreds of thousands of independent voices is only partly true, for those outlets base much of their content (as much as 80 percent, according to some studies) on print and broadcast media reporting they themselves cannot afford.

The Federal Communications Commission is reexamining media ownership rules that will affect the number of newspapers and television and radio outlets that megacorporations like Murdoch's can own. An attempt to allow greater media consolidation was beaten back four years ago, when the public (in the millions), Congress and the courts responded with a powerful "No."

Another attempt is underway and will come to the fore within the next few months. Action must again be taken to push it back. In the words of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, "What's good for shareholders of huge media conglomerates isn't always what's good for the public interest or our civil dialogue." (The latest in a series of public FCC hearings will be held in Chicago on September 20.)

Democracy depends on independent, thorough, clamorous journalism. Such reporting is, as Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker, "the marrow in our constitutional system." Without it, there can be no citizenry sufficiently informed to protect its rights or to make the decisions that rule our lives. That's why the Founding Fathers made freedom of the press the First Amendment.

Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York. This article has been published in the Messenger Post.

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