Rupert Murdoch, feted by leaders who feared the sway his media empire held over British voters, has been put on notice by UK Prime Minister David Cameron that “the clock has stopped” on his influence over British politics.
Summoned to Parliament on July 19 to say what he knew about illegal activities at the News of the World, Britain’s best- selling newspaper before it was shut by the scandal, Murdoch said premiers asked him “many times” to visit their 10 Downing Street office in London through the back door.
“He’s not going to have anything like the same influence he’s had in the past,” said Lance Price, who worked for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1998 to 2001 before leaving and publishing “The Spin Doctor’s Diary.” Lawmakers would take Murdoch’s likely reaction into account when deciding policies, Price said. “No prime minister’s going to treat him in the way he once did.”
Leaders of both Britain’s main parties — Labour and the Conservatives — wooed Murdoch, whose News Corp. still publishes The Sun, the biggest selling daily tabloid, and the upmarket Times and Sunday Times. The Sun has backed the winner in every election since 1979, when it urged voters to support Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party.
‘More Healthy’
“We have all got to be open about the fact that both front benches spent a lot of time courting Rupert Murdoch, courting News International,” News Corp’s. UK publishing division, and other media, Cameron told the House of Commons last week. “This sort of relationship needs to be changed and put on a more healthy basis. Now we are prepared to admit it, but basically, if you like, the clock has stopped on my watch.”
Blair once flew to Australia to address a meeting of News Corp. executives as he sought to woo Murdoch’s support for Labour in the mid-1990s.
Blair’s communications chief, Alastair Campbell, described in his diaries the moment in the run-up to the 1997 election when The Sun announced it would back Labour instead of John Major’s Conservatives.
Blair “thought it was good news in its own right,” as well as being “good in the effect it would have on the other side’s morale,” Campbell wrote. “On one level, it was ridiculous that it should be seen as a big event, but the reality is that is exactly how it is seen.” The News of the World, with a reputation for covering sex and scandal, was Murdoch’s first newspaper purchase in Britain in 1969. He added The Sun shortly afterward. The Times and Sunday Times joined the Murdoch stable at the start of the 1980s, bought from Thomson Corp. after a labour dispute had shut The Times for more than a year.
“There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press, and the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life,” a leading television playwright, Dennis Potter, said in a BBC television interview shortly before his death in 1994.
