The effects of Rupert Murdoch’s tribulations brought about by the transgressions of News of the World may be long term, but they are hardly without historical precedent. Whether deliberately or by accident, the media has a long tradition of breaking and bending the truth as well as relying upon an ignorant readership. It is this “nation of sheep” William J. Lederer addressed when he wrote in 1961, “…the press is so convinced that the American people don’t want the hard facts of foreign affairs that it makes only routine efforts to report them…”
Ethics in the Reporting of News
Murdoch’s Newscorp is under fire for hacking into the private phone conversations of ordinary citizens during extraordinary and tumultuous moments in their lives. These initial revelations resulted in resignations by top Murdoch editors, London police leaders, and the closure of News of the World. But it’s all happened before.
Stephen Bates, commenting on the Watergate scandal, writes that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein “employed several deceptions…The Washington Post reporters got confidential telephone toll records from phone company sources.” Bates’ book, If No News, Send Rumors, details numerous instances of journalistic misrepresentations and outright lies told to people possessing confidential information in order to write their stories.
Most students of journalism are familiar with the famous telegram William Randolph Hearst sent to artist Frederic Remington in Cuba just before the start of the Spanish-American War: “You furnish pictures. I will furnish war.” Author Phillip Knightley states that the story might be “apocryphal,” but it has been alluded to often, even in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies that pitted 007 against the fictional media mogul Elliot Carver.
Losing Trust in the Media
Another impact caused by the Murdoch scandal involves media trust. During the July 19, 2011 edition of the Diane Rehm Show (NPR), numerous callers highlighted the view that the press simply cannot be trusted to report the news and those media giants like Murdoch’s Newscorp followed political agendas. Part of this was attributed to paranoia, especially among high profile media anchors, according to NPR’s On Point.
It also doesn’t help that Murdoch, during his interview with a British Parliamentary committee, denied any knowledge of wrongdoing, as did his son James. He claimed that people he had trusted “let me down.” Murdoch’s statement that this was “the most humble day of my life” is also difficult to reconcile. It’s hard to imagine a humble Rupert Murdoch as much as it is, at least for ordinary citizens hurt by the scandal, his plausible deniability.
There are very few institutions that the ordinary person still trusts. The Murdoch scandal adds the media decisively to a list that includes government institutions like the Congress, mainstream churches, Wall Street brokers, financial institutions, and the legal institutions, a mistrust magnified by the recent Casey Anthony trial in Florida.
Dissemination of News in the U.S. has Always Been Questionable
Historian Adam Hochschild, in his book detailing the Congo atrocities attributed to the Belgian King Leopold II, spends many chapters on the contributions of Henry Morton Stanley and the scramble for Africa. Stanley was the man who trekked through Tanganyika to find Dr. David Livingstone.
Stanley, however, used every opportunity to mislead the public in news stories and books about his role in Africa. Hochschild alludes to the notion that this need for extreme recognition may have been tied to Stanley’s personal insecurities. Certainly his upbringing greatly contributed to the many fabrications he invented about himself. In the process, however, the average readers in Britain and the U.S. were misled.
How different is Stanley’s story from, for example, the mainstream media’s coverage of the Vietnam War? Even during World War II, politics and the public’s right to know was lost in the fog of war. The Bataan Death March, for example, was kept from the American public until the story was finally leaked to the press in January 1945. During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s highly efficient propaganda machine curtailed any negative criticism of the war effort.
Obtaining Accurate and Ethical Reporting in the 21st Century
Although the internet has been responsible for promoting many “urban legends” as well as giving free license to virtually anyone with an agenda, it has also opened the door to legitimate as well as ethical reporting that often circumvents the mainstream media. The internet has become “all the news fit to print” and a whole lot more.
Readers can peruse foreign newspapers and journals, many with English sites. NGOs and educational organizations offer divergent views on issues and make available archives that were once only accessible in libraries. In the 1980s and 1990s, publications like the Utne Reader provided readers with non-mainstream news, often provocative but always eye-opening. Today these stories abound on the world-wide web.
In 1980 Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss wrote The Spike, a novel about how the Soviet Union had infiltrated media organizations in order to promote disinformation. Their novel details how editors, writers, and the public can be easily misled. Rupert Murdoch was not the only person misled by the News of the World scandal. Ultimately the victims of the telephone hacking were misled by the belief that the media functions on ethics. History demonstrates that such beliefs are often false and that the Murdoch scandal is not without precedent.
Sources:
- Stephen Bates, If No News, Send Rumors: Anecdotes of American Journalism (Henry Holt and Company, 1989)
- “Deepening Troubles for the Murdoch Empire,” The Diane Rehm Show, NPR, July 19, 2011
- Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998)
- Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty, From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975)
- William J. Lederer, A Nation Of Sheep (Fawcett Crest, 1961)
- “Murdoch Says He Was Misled About Tabloid Scandal,” NPR, July 19, 2011
- “Murdoch’s Empire Under Siege,” On Point, NPR, Tom Ashbrook, host, July 19, 2011
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