I received a push poll call yesterday. It was so stupid that I had the pollster laughing and admitting she hated republicans also.
I know these kinds of polls are effective as seen by McCain's loss in SC in 2000 when they pushed the idea that he had an out-of-wedlock black baby. But the questions they asked me were along the lines of (I'm exaggerating here but not by much)..."If you knew that Harry Mitchell ate the brains of baby rats...would you be more or less likely to vote for him?" or "if it was discovered that Harry Mitchell was harboring illegals in the basement of his house would you continue to support him?" I swear, those were the kinds of questions they asked.
Naturally I admitted that I could never support a candidate that didn't feast on rat brains and I would be disappointed if all Democratic candidates didn't smuggle illegals into Arizona just so we could stack the vote.
This is my third republican push poll over the years but I've never heard of one done by the democrats.
As angry MPs agree witnesses should be called to account over the phone-hacking affair, Henry Porter and Will Hutton examine the wide influence of the media empire behind the scandal
Sunday 12 September 2010
The malign influence of Rupert Murdoch on British life
News International acts as if it is above the law and has contributed to the coarsening of society's values, writes Henry Porter
When Rupert Murdoch appeared on his own Fox News Channel last week and was, astonishingly, asked about the News of the World phone-hacking scandal – "the story that was really buzzing around the country and certainly here in New York", as the anchorman put it – Murdoch cut him off with the words: "I'm not talking about that issue at all today. I'm sorry."
Seen against the background of Sun Valley, Idaho, and in short sleeves and sunglasses, Murdoch appeared more like a gangster fighting extradition proceedings than the attendee of a media conference. For some reason, the vicious agility of the elderly Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II came to mind. Naturally, the Fox News anchor didn't challenge the man he called Mr Chairman and the matter of the mass hacking of phones belonging to MPs, public figures and celebrities was dropped as Murdoch moved to praise his own organisation for its robust criticism of the Obama administration, delivering one swift jab at a competitor, the Financial Times, in the process.
Murdoch is a problem for British society and the News of the World phone-hacking story – given further impetus over the last 10 days by the New York Times and the Guardian – is a symptom of the chronic malignity of his power. In the last 40 years, we have grown used to News International (NI), so that it is difficult to imagine Britain without Murdoch's occupation, without, for instance, the leaders of the main parties humiliating themselves and our political system to gain his endorsement, or News International journalists and executives treating the law, national institutions and Parliament with disdain.
Murdoch has become one of the political issues of our time, as menacing in his own special way to democracy and conduct of politics as many other threats our society faces, only we do not see it, because his power is used behind the scenes to extend his commercial influence and so his grip on the flow of so much of the information in Britain. He and his equally unappealing son, James, (probable salary £1.3m) may bellyache about the BBC, but when you set the advertising spend and income of BSkyB alongside those of ITV and the BBC and add his newspapers and websites into the equation, you realize that Murdoch is by far the greatest force.
In February, I evoked the nightmare of Berlusconi's Italy when commenting on the fact that News International had concealed the truth about the extent of the phone hacking and that people such as Rebekah Brooks, formerly editor of the Sun and News of the World and now chief executive of NI, had refused to turn up to answer questions from the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. This is wrong in one respect. Berlusconi is at least an Italian operating in his own land. As an American citizen, Murdoch appears to have scant interest in the plurality of information in Britain and therefore the health of British society.
His overriding concern is that the government remains covertly in step with his plans for expansion and that the flow of profits to News Corp remains uninterrupted. It is as though we had handed over a huge chunk of British agricultural land or given up our food distribution networks to a relentless foreign corporation.
But the amazing thing about Murdoch's power is that it is maintained even though we owe him absolutely nothing and he is, theoretically, at the mercy of laws and regulations that can be activated to control him. His power is in a sense illusory, maintained because people choose to believe it. He argues with some reason that Sky News Sport and Sky+, for instance, and the continued existence of the loss-making Times and Sunday Times newspapers (losses up to £87.7m in 2009) make an important contribution to entertainment and information, yet it is also probable that other companies, possibly more benign, would have grown to occupy the commercial space that he has created for NI.
Anyway, the good in his enterprises must surely be set against the detriment to British society, laid bare in the phone-hacking scandal. These are as follows. First, he has been responsible for a distortion of politics in the last four decades. In an unguarded moment at Davos three years ago, he replied to a question about shaping the agenda on the Iraq war: "We basically supported the Bush policy." And so he did. In the nine days before the invasion, freedom of information requests reveal that he had three conversations with Tony Blair.
No British political party has succeeded at an election in the last 30 years without Murdoch's blessing and the drumbeat of his papers can make life extremely difficult for a government when he withdraws his support, as he did from Labour last year. This ability to intervene decisively in general elections gives him immediate access to the prime minister and power to his editors to dictate laws, such as Sarah's Law. It was hardly a surprise when David Cameron employed the former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, now mired in the phone-hacking scandal, to be his director of communications.
Blair's deputy director of communications, Lance Price, called Murdoch the 24th member of the cabinet. "His presence was always felt," he wrote. "No big decision could ever be made inside Number 10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men – Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch. On all the really big decisions, anybody else could safely be ignored." That is almost certainly true of the new government and Andy Coulson is seen as the key facilitator of Rupert's habitual privilege.
Second, News International regards itself as above the law of the land. As well as paying out large sums to several victims of the phone hacking, who might otherwise have brought cases against NI in open court, it is suspected of subverting the police.
The Metropolitan Police's investigations by Andy Hayman into Glenn Mulcaire's operation to tap phones on behalf of the News of the World is thought by MPs such as Paul Farrelly to be inadequate. Mr Hayman is now employed by the Times as a columnist. Further, Rebekah Brooks admitted to a House of Commons committee, then denied it, that as editor she authorised payments to the police for stories.
Unseen political influence, paying the police for stories and the hobbling of due process are the standard procedures followed by crime families and though I do not say that Murdoch is a criminal, there is a case for placing the influence of the media magnate, his clannish associates and family on the spectrum of undesirable behaviour in a democracy.
The third part of the case against Rupert Murdoch stems from the unusual clarity of a one-dimensional being – the lack of doubt in his positions – as well as the acid drip of his customary cynicism.
British society is far from perfect: we are sometimes harsh, jeering, vulgar, indolent and lacking in compassion and it is to these traits that Murdoch's tabloid newspapers and much else in his media empire appeal. But look at Britain before Murdoch bought the News of the World and you see a nation that was a good deal less derisive. Murdoch has undoubtedly contributed to the coarsening of British society and also to an erosion of values, which now sees a society where the outrageous practices of his – and other – tabloid journalists are expected, if not quite accepted.
I often wonder what Murdoch and his family will leave behind when they pass from the scene – the memory of an extraordinarily successful business empire and of many conquests no doubt, but there will be few monuments, libraries, inventions, endowments, galleries or campaigns for justice to remember them by; merely a vague sense of depletion and of a power that existed, to a bewildering degree, for its own sake.
After a good debate in the Commons, which, incidentally, was an encouraging change from the proceedings in the last Parliament, the standards and privileges committee will investigate the hacking of MPs' phones. Together with renewed scrutiny of the police investigations this is a start.
MPs could do worse than summon Murdoch to the Commons, to answer questions about who sanctioned illegal practices by his journalists, but he'd probably reply as Hyman Roth did to Michael Corleone: "I didn't ask who gave the order because it had nothing to do with business."
Page Two follows - It's time government stood in the way of his ambitions
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