ANOTHER VOICE
Time for Murdoch to take Holy Orders
AUBERON WAUGH
Can this be true? True or false, it seemed most unlikely that Murdoch would say anything as interesting. But the excel- lent advance summaries of the interview which appeared in the Observer, the Sun- day Telegraph and the Sunday Correspon- dent were certainly not without interest. Headline news, so far as I was concerned, was that Murdoch has become a born- again Christian under the influence of Billy Graham. He foresees a great religious revival in this country in which his news- papers will play their part by maintaining `high moral values'.
'I see newspapers as instruments for good, not as instruments to make money,' he said, according to the Sunday Tele- graph's Jane Thynne. 'As we achieve a higher standard of living and people do better, they will look for moral and reli- gious values,' he said, according to the Observer's Richard Brooks.
Well, he ought to know about the effect of a high standard of living, having been born a multi-millionaire, and increased his wealth many times over. But the announcement of his conversion comes at the same time as the first major hiccup in the almost unbroken riches-to-riches story of his life. In the same interview, according to all accounts I read except the slightly more reticent report by the Sunday Times's Richard Palmer, he confirms that Sky Television was losing about £2 million a week, and expected it to lose between £100 million and £120 million this year. Is it this development which has brought about a sudden yearning for spiritual values?
I don't think so. It is wonderful what the threat of an investigation by the Monopo- lies and Mergers Commission can do. It seems to have persuaded Mr Kelvin McKenzie, famed editor of the Sun, to give his first interview for eight years. 'I felt it was a doubtful exercise but it was time to answer criticism,' said born-again Rupert.
Maurice Lipworth, the South African- born Chairman of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission may not be aware of this ability to work miracles, like Padre Pio, by remote control, but I feel we should consider making plastic effigies of him and burning incense in front of them, because of full-blooded investigation into all Murdoch operations in this country is now scandalously overdue. As if it was not enough to own 38 per cent of the British press, he now demands that the liBC should close down its news service to encourage people to watch Sky Television: `If Britain had truly competitive television doing news, there would be no need for BBC News. In the United States the three commercial networks are all extremely independent of the government.'
Perhaps they are. I do not know. But nothing in Murdoch's record in this coun- try makes me suppose that anything he controlled would be independent of the Government. This man, who describes himself as 'not a Tory but a Thatcherite' has been utterly abject in his support for Mrs Thatcher, even to the extent of help- ing the Government cover-up of the Gib- raltar shootings with a gratuitous smear campaign against contrary witnesses. Time was, we might have been grateful to him for his influence on the elections of 1979, 1983 and 1987, but things have changed. Thatcher, with her failing judgment and vastly increased obstinacy, is going to lose the next election with her accursed poll tax and other fatuous enterprises. The specta- cle of these two propping each other up while one degrades the media, the other destroys the body politic, is not an edifying one. Thatcher's support for Murdoch is a sufficient reason in itself for urging the Tories to pluck up courage to get rid of her before it is too late. Murdoch's support for Thatcher will bring the country to ruin. If M. S. Lipworth can't see that, then it is time someone pointed it out to him.
I cannot quite see the point of Clive James's description: 'Like a Goth swagger- ing round Rome wearing an onyx toilet seat for a collar, Rupert Murdoch exudes self confidence.' But the point that Mur- doch has done nothing but vulgarise, cheapen and humiliate everything he has touched, is well made. I am not sure about the onyx toilet seat, but I feel a clue to his character may be in the mouth. From all the photographs which are increasingly printed of him — soon he will rival Captain Maxwell in that respect — it is the mouth which stands out. As an amateur physiog- nomist, I am well aware of all the reserva- tions which must be scattered around such facile labels as 'murderer's eyes', 'psycho- path earlobes', 'delinquent mouth', but I feel it is the mouth which needs watching.
On Sunday, it apparently assured us that he would keep Sky Television going at its present catastrophic rate of loss for five years, although the commitment was some- what qualified. 'Let's say we will nurse it for five years. By then either a few million people will have bought dishes, or we will admit we were wrong and shut it.'
`Let's say' is not quite a solemn and binding promise of the sort we used to hear tripping from Harold Wilson's equally interesting mouth. Perhaps he has not quite achieved Wilson's ability to believe everything he says. If I were a poker player, I would suspect he is bluffing. It seems inconceivable to me that he will keep it going for more than another six months after February at £2 million a week. For the Government to intervene and let him off the hook would be a great mistake. M. S. Lipworth should concentrate on his holdings in newspapers and book pub- lishing. Sky Television can be relied upon to look after itself, with, perhaps, a little help from the rest of us. When Murdoch announced that British television was class- dominated it did not seem to occur to him that there might be a good reason for this, although his recent conversion to the more positive aspects of the monarchy may be an indication that his mind is ticking over. Our own, humble role in these great events must be to continue pointing out that anybody who puts a dish aerial outside his house is not only advertising that he is exceptionally unintelligent and uncultured, but also that he is at best lower-middle- class and stuck there.
Perhaps Murdoch sees it all as a great crusade, to promote morality by exposing errant husbands and wives in his stinking News of the World and scarcely less dis- gusting (since he took over) Today. We must persuade him that the best place for him to work off this higher altruism is within Holy Orders.
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