Erstellt am: 20. 7. 2011 - 16:02 Uhr

The Murdochs and the MPs

The much anticipated appearance of the Murdochs in front of a committee of British members of parliament turns up a lot of theatre, but not much substance.

Yesterday afternoon I switched my computer to live coverage of the media event of the year: the Murdochs sitting before MPs.

Their task was twofold. Firstly, to give the impression they were being contrite and helpful, but while saying a lot, in the end saying nothing. Secondly, to show to nervous News Corp board directors that James Murdoch could be trusted to take charge of his father’s company, restore faith in their organization and therefore raise the share price of News Corp.

Plenty of role-playing

There was plenty of role-playing here. Both had to appear contrite, sorrowful and offer regret, dad was to play the role of respected senior figure giving short answers. Son James had the facts and figures and would talk until everyone got so bored that the inquisitor would move onto the next point. They could say nothing that could incriminate them personally or their immediate executives, and to that end they carried off this piece of theatre well. But are we any further forward in knowing an answer to the big question: was phone-hacking, and therefore criminal activity, an accepted norm at the News of the World and, by implication, others newspapers as well?

Murdoch's frailty - all for the cameras?

For some closer analysis we turned to Charlie Beckett who himself has spent decades working as a journalist at the BBC and ITV News. He now runs POLIS - the forum for research and debate into international journalism at the London School of Economics. I was curious as I watched the demeanor of Rupert Murdoch. Was this rather detached senior figure I saw yesterday the same firebrand newspaper proprietor that could command audiences with Prime Ministers at a moment’s notice? Was something wrong with his health? He is in his 80s, after all. Well Charlie suggested it was probably Murdoch Senior putting on an act to counter his somewhat aggressive tendencies. This was all about creating a very effective campaign of damage limitation and in that Rupert Murdoch and his son succeeded. But later on in the question and answer session there were some: I do not know's and I do not recall's. So if you say you don’t know what was going on, then who is running News Corp, since you are supposed to be the boss? That leads to the future, since if News Corp is an organization which demonstrates that it was too big and let things get out of control, could it be trusted to operate responsibly if it took total control of satellite television in Europe? Although the bid has been dropped for now, what kind of big and out of control enterprise could that end up being if it were to successfully revive this bid later?

Pies and Punches

We learned some minor details. Rupert’s smaller children played with (former British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown’s children. So there was clear friendship and chemistry, but it’s a relationship that has since broken down with Gordon Brown accusing Murdoch’s The Sun newspaper of leaking a private health issue about one of his children.

We also learned that Mrs Murdoch has a neat right smack hand, having leapt up and whacked the phantom foam pie thrower. We also heard that a succession of British Prime Ministers took Mr Murdoch into Downing Street through the back door rather than the front door, which begs the question: why not though the front door like everyone else? But that’s it as far as real nuggets of information. There was no thunderbolt of a revelation, no Katie Couric playing gotcha with Sarah Palin moment. These were British Members of Parliament who aren’t great at the surgical close inspection game. They gently poke around and see if any new scraps of knowledge are revealed. If there was anything to be discovered, they failed.

Back to Number 10

Now the drama switches back over to Downing Street with some more rather tricky questions for David Cameron to answer. We are starting to get more details of his eagerness to employ former News International personnel, ignoring the advice of his own team. The story and the revelations that have been emerging at lightning speed are set to continue….

You can hear the full interview with Charlie Beckett here: