Britain’s press gelled early into an influential and profitable national institution. The fact the country’s large population lived in a relatively small area made this possible. That offered a sizeable potential readership which, given the comparatively short distances involved, could readily receive nationwide papers daily. Achieving a wide readership, not just reaching the intellectual elite of the nation, was the key to success. Before the First World War, newspaperman Lord Northcliffe built a powerful press empire by catering to popular tastes for titillating tidbits of information, then used his papers to intervene in British politics and whip up nationalistic attitudes before and during the war.
Northcliffe was British born and bred but his successors reflected a strong tradition for Britain’s press barons to come from abroad — to repeat on Britain’s shores their success in building a newspaper bastion on their home turf. Lord Beaverbrook was Canadian, as was Lord Thompson of Fleet and after him Conrad Black. Rupert Murdoch came from Australia. Robert Maxwell was born in Czechoslovakia, despite a British name. He was also a Second World War refugee who stayed in Britain afterwards and later built his press conglomerate there. Except for Thompson, these gentlemen manifested Northcliffe’s taste for involvement in Britain’s domestic political life. They liked to keep company with political elitists and influence them. Their clout came not so much from their immense personal wealth, but from their ability to use their newspapers to influence public opinion in political matters. In return savvy politicians interested in re-election courted the press barons.
The wealth and influence of the media magnates was built on the labours of working journalists, many of them brash and opinionated. They did not enjoy a universal good reputation. In 1930 British poet and civil servant Humbert Wolfe gave a dour assessment: “You cannot hope to bribe or twist, (thank God!) the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
We are beginning to see something of this in Murdoch’s current troubles, where accounts of the news gathering techniques of his flagship News of the World newspaper include allegations of offensive interception and interference with private telephone communications and bribery of police officers. What remains to be seen is whether Murdoch’s operating techniques included knowing and encouraging such illegalities. He denies this, saying he feels betrayed by subordinates. Richard Nixon said as much in blaming Watergate on overzealous people in campaigns doing things wrong.
The question is how much Murdoch knew, and if he knew nothing, why not? There are techniques where the wishes of a results-oriented man at the top can be conveyed downwards without including any express command for wrongdoing. But the man at the top has a moral responsibility for knowing the details of to what his orders give rise. As the chief British prosecutor stated at the Nuremberg war crimes trial, “What peculiar dispensation of Providence was there that protected them from knowledge of these matters, matters which were their concern?”
St. Albert resident David Haas first encountered the News of the World around 1954 in packages of British newspapers and magazines sent from relatives in England.
