THE TEDDY AND RUPERT SHOW
the attempt by the Kennedy clan to worst the Dirty Digger
WHEN Harold Macmillan paid his first visit to the Kennedys' Washington and was privately asked, on his return, to describe it, he replied, 'It's rather like watching the Borgias take over a respectable north Italian town.' I thought of this while reading of the efforts by the present leader of the clan, Senator Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts, to do down Rupert Mur- doch. This has had the amazing consequ- ence of turning Murdoch, if only tempor- arily, into a hero even among New York liberals.
Murdoch's great merit, which even his enemies will not deny, is that he loves newspapers and cannot bear to see one die. Indeed so far as I know he has never killed one and he has certainly saved many. In 1976, for instance, he saved the New York Post. Many may not like what he has done with it but it is still alive and unquestion- ably kicking. But even his best efforts have not made it profitable, and it loses between $10 million and $20 million a year. In 1982 he likewise bought the Boston Herald and saved it from closure. He has turned it into a vigorous newspaper which, among other things, has the courage to challenge the arrogant power of the Kennedys in their Boston fief. Last year it turned in a healthy profit of $1.4 million and its capital value may now be as high as $100 million.
However, Murdoch's chief ambition in America is to create a fourth television network to break the triopoly of CBS, NBC and ABC. To do this he bought, in 1986, a number of big-city television sta- tions, including WNYW-TV (Channel 5) in New York and WFXT-TV (Channel 25) in Boston.
This immediately brought him into con- flict with the 1975 rule of the Federal Communications Commission which for- bids ownership of both a television station and a daily paper in the same market. Murdoch pleaded that the difficulty of selling the two papers might mean the closure of one or both. The FCC, which has powers of waiver, extended the dead- line for selling to 30 June in Boston and 6 March in New York, and Murdoch had hopes of further extensions or even exemp- tion. At this point the friends of Senator Kennedy, who hates Murdoch and the Herald, engaged in some remarkable skul- duggery. This was made possible by the curious system of closed-door conferences between the Senate and the House of Representatives, which resolves legislative conflicts between the two bodies. The system is necessary to meet deadlines but it can be and is abused by powerful politi- cians to slip clauses they favour, without any debate on the open floor, into general spending bills.
Thus, just before Christmas, Congress passed and the President signed a $600- billion budget bill. It is over 1,000 pages and hidden in them were at least two of these trick clauses. One was inserted by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. He is the smug, humbugging Democrat who pres- ided over the Irangate hearings and took such a high moral line with Colonel Oliver North, whose only real crime was patriot- ism. Inouye inserted a clause providing $8 million of taxpayers' money to finance a project favoured by one of his campaign contributors, a New York real estate de- veloper. When this shady ploy came to light, the New York Daily News reported, 'That's funny, you don't look Jewish.' 'Numerous attempts to reach Inouye over several days were unsuccessful.'
More serious was the slipping in of a clause which denies the FCC the right to waive the double-ownership rule. The front man used for this was Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, the Democratic Chair- man of the Senate Commerce Committee. An assiduous reporter from the New York Times, Alex S. Jones, got Hollings to admit that this clause, never put before either House, let alone debated, was 'aimed directly' at Murdoch. As the col- umnist William Safire has pointed out, legislative punishment of an individual is comparable to Bills of Attainder, which are banned by the US Constitution. Moreover, Hollings also admitted that he cleared the language of the clause with Senator Kennedy and his fellow senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, on the grounds that it concerned Boston. But it also concerned New York and its Post, and no attempt was made to inform the two New York senators, Daniel P. Moynihan and Alphonse D'Amato, for the good and simple reason that they would have killed the manoeuvre stone dead.
The Kennedy interest was obviously hoping, by forcing Murdoch to sell the Herald quickly, to steer the paper into the hands of their friends, who would either keep it going and change its editorial policies, or kill it and sell off its valuable real estate. They underestimated the hos- tile reaction to their ploy which is seen, even by left-liberal commentators who normally back Kennedy, as an abuse of power and an attempt to interfere with the freedom of the press. In New York, where the Post is now in grave danger, with the possible loss of 1,000 jobs, the fury is pretty general and has been powerfully voiced by the two outraged senators and by a frantic Mayor Ed Koch, who has accused Senators Kennedy and Hollings of totalita- rian behaviour and violating the First Amendment.
Despite the uproar, the difficulties in- volved in reversing the legislation are immense and may well be insuperable. But it is election year and Mayor Koch urges that 'freedom of the press should be an issue in every congressional race'. Mur- doch is determined that the manoeuvre will not succeed in Boston and says that, if necessary, he will sell the television station rather than let Kennedy have his way with the Herald. He will also have recourse to the courts.
The resemblance of the clause to an attainder-like legislative act, and the possi- ble infringement of the First Amendment, open up endless vistas of just the kind of constitutional litigation the US courts like. It may well be that Murdoch will get more time by this means than he ever could have gouged out of the FCC. If so he will have the last laugh, and in the meantime he is greatly enjoying the sensation of being the morally injured party.
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