The Rise of Rupert Murdoch: Making of a Mogul (Part 1)

0:00Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics. Plus, to enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chatroom and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.

0:21Hi there, it's Alistair here. I have just recorded a mini-series about one of the most consequential figures in global news, politics, culture, life in general over the past 50 years. gentleman by the name of Rupert Murdoch and with me today is not Rory Stewart instead I'm with Michael Wolfe who has known Murdoch for years he's written several books on him and generally knows more than most about this man. We go through his life from his start in Australia through the time I knew him when he was getting engaged and involved in British politics into his creation of Fox News ending with his family's very own real-life succession battle.

0:59To give you a taste of it Here's an extract from this week's episode. To hear the full thing and get all the benefits of a TripPlus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com. Rupert Murdoch. Keith Rupert Murdoch. I know that's his real name. And as you know, Michael, I'm always suspicious of people who don't use the name they're given at birth. But he was probably trying to differentiate himself from his father, also Keith. No, it's interesting. Why would you choose to be called Rupert if you could be called Keith? Keith is so much more Aussie than Rupert, isn't it? But here we are. Let's just explain to, we have lots of younger listeners.

1:33I'm sure most would have heard of Rupert Murdoch. But if you want to know why we think he's worth, Michael and I sitting down for several hours to talk about him, he's a very, very consequential business figure. He's a deeply consequential political figure. He's a deeply consequential cultural figure. And I think more specifically, you can make the case that he changed the media landscape and the way the media changed forever. I think you can make the case that probably wouldn't have Donald Trump as president without Rupert Murdoch and the way that Fox News went. Well, let's go further than that.

2:08I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20th century. Certainly in terms of longevity, he holds power longer than anyone else in our time. And it's meaningful power. It's phenomenal power. It's not passing political power. Well, I know we'll get into debate about the difference between political power, media power, cultural power, business power. But I think you can certainly make the case that if you were to list the 100 most powerful people in the world over every year in the last century, and he's been around for 94 of them, and he becomes fairly powerful in Australia fairly young, he then becomes pretty powerful within the UK and then now very powerful in the American system.

2:56Well, not just now. Now, for 50 years, he's been powerful in America. So if you measured that, if you gave them a point, so like there was a period where you'd have said JFK was the most powerful person. Briefly. Correct. There was a point when Tony Blair was the most powerful person here for a decade. Thatcher here. But if you actually then gave them league table positions and mapped them and said he was there the longest, I think you can make the case it's Murdoch. Yeah. And if you are conspiracy minded. Which I'm not. But who else isn't in this world? He is. And if you think about who is a power behind the power, who is the secret power, then I think you would make a case that certainly at that table, there is always Rupert Murdoch.

3:43Okay. So you're going so far as to say that in our lifetime or our adult lifetime, you and I, that he has been one of, if not the most powerful figures. I don't agree with that, but I can see why you say that. I would certainly say that. I mean, I would just say, and incontrovertibly, you could put it that he is a person who has held power far longer than anyone else in our time, except the Queen, if you think she had power. Yeah. And the Queen actually didn't have the same sort of power. Exactly. It's fair to say. And I would add that in this march of conservatism and populism, which comes out of the liberal age, we think liberalism has achieved an unassailable place in the Western world, except that there's Rupert Murdoch, who is carrying this conservative populist strain.

4:38He helps really carry it to, I hesitate to say victory, but possibly victory. It certainly pushes it back, that's for sure. But the other thing is, you know, the media industry as we now know it, as this megalopolis bohemoth, is a creation of Rupert Murdoch. Before Rupert Murdoch, newspapers were owned by newspaper owners, movie studios by movie studios, television networks by television networks. Publishers. Book publishers by book publishers. Hollywood. It is Murdoch, singularly Murdoch, who brings it all together. All this power comes under one roof because of Rupert Murdoch. Now, why are you here?

5:23I guess because you've written these two books, but also because you've got this very long experience as a surveyor of the American media scene and the American political scene. And why do I maybe have a special interest in this? I actually, it's not something I shout about too often, but I did actually work for two of Rupert Burdock's papers. In the 80s, I was a young freelancer who worked on The Sun. And when I jumped to Tony Blair from journalism in 1994, I was working on a paper called. I was working on a paper called Today, which was then owned by Murdoch as well. But it was much more when I was working for Tony Blair and the Labour government that I got to see Murdoch very, very close up.

6:02And then, of course, further experiences, the phone hacking scandal, which we'll talk about in a later episode. So I've had lots of contact with him and his people. And you've got this amazing ability, Michael, to persuade people that you should write these fly-on-the-wall books, which don't turn out to be that sympathetic. Well, you know, it was a – and I don't know how I do that. I just kind of knock on the door and people for some reason, foolish reason, say, come in. But I had known Murdoch off and on in media circles in New York. And then when he bought the Wall Street Journal in – and that would be 2007, I said to him – and he was feeling on top of the world then.

6:44That was his penultimate accomplishment. Yeah, because he'd been through a pretty rough time just before that, hadn't he? He was struggling a little bit. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of struggles in Murdoch's life, but he had accomplished this. His dream, this tabloid publisher, his dream was always to own newspapers of influence and gravitas. So he bought the Wall Street Journal, and I said to him, well, why don't I write a book about it, about you and the Wall Street Journal? And he said, yeah, sure. That sounds like a great idea. And so I immediately went out and sold this book for a lot of money.

7:25And then I showed up to write this. I showed up at his office and we sat there and we talked for an hour and a half. And at the end of the hour and a half, he said, have you gotten all you need? You know, I had sold this book for a lot of money. So I needed a lot more. And I was like, I said, I'd like to follow up on a few things. So he got up and he has this old man way of moving. Even the young man. He's never really been a young man. So he got up, went behind the desk and then penciled me in for the next week. And this went on for a year. So I have spent certainly more time with him than any other journalist not in his employ.

8:12Of which there have been many, many, many thousands. Yes. Although not all of them spend that much time with him because he's quite a sort of close circle. Yeah, no, I may have spent more time with him than anybody but his closest executives, which is a reason that I think he's kind of relentless in talking about the media. He exhausts people because his only focus is the media. Who's here? Who's where? Who's what moves? What chess pieces? And he exhausts everybody. So I could see the people around them kind of pushing me into this space. You talked to them. Well, you certainly did. I guess some of our younger readers may know Murdoch because of the Brian Cox series Succession.

8:54Because even though Brian, who I know very well, says it's not necessarily the Murdoch story, you can see the Murdoch story within it. It's a story of a media baron coming to the end of his time. And he's got these very sort of difficult, grasping children. Avaricious children, yes. to hear the full episode sign up at the restlesspolitics.com