Abstract

The London Trip of a Global Tyrant

The author comments on the visits to London of U.S. President George W. Bush and of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. This city has been the November host of a global tyrant, on whose rampages the sun never sets. His name is not George Bush but Rupert Murdoch. The entire state visit, the first by a US President since Woodrow Wilson visited these shores in 1918, has been depicted in virtually every newspaper as a political embarrassment to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who issued the invitation many months ago, when he supposed that the two could preen over a successful operation in Iraq. How different has been the brief tour of his British assets by Rupert Murdoch, on hand to crush a rising by some shareholders in British Sky Broadcasting, who claim the company is being run by Murdoch as a private fiefdom in a manner injurious to their interests. At BSkyB's annual general meeting on November 14, Murdoch conducted himself in a manner that would have won the approval of Vlad the Impaler, snarling at one dissident that if he didn't like it he should sell his shares, and bickering openly with BSkyB's chief executive, his son James. The global tyrant still had time that day to grant an interview to the BBC in which he placed Tony Blair on notice that the loyalty of Murdoch's newspapers was not to be taken for granted. Bruce Page's detailed and compelling case, based on his investigation of Murdoch's operations in Australia, Britain, the United States and China, amounts to this: As an international operator, Murdoch offers his target governments a privatized version of a state propaganda service, manipulated without scruple and with no regard for truth. His price takes the form of vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief, monopoly markets and so forth.