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Loading... The Murdoch Archipelagoby Bruce Page
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  Miro | Jul 1, 2006 |  
 For any future biographer of Murdoch, Page's book will be essential reading. Unfortunately the book is such a difficult read that its provocative analysis may be confined to an audience of media studies students and Murdoch junkies.  This is an important and timely book... Bruce Page's book is full of original perceptions on the historical relationship between journalism and politics, in Australia and America as well as in Britain. It is also a sharp warning that the guardians of our city are about to open its gates once again to a man who has shown that he cannot be trusted. Page has always possessed all the energy and passion of the natural-born autodidact. Extraordinary individuals (ranging from Machiavelli to Max Weber) are enrolled under his banner in order to press his attack home. The result can be a little bewildering: there are so many detours off the main highway that sometimes it becomes difficult to recall where the road is leading. Yet the book, untidy and sprawling as it is, does contain some good things. I learnt a fair amount, for example, from an early chapter giving a potted history of Australian journalism, including the role of the subject’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch.  Page's book is admittedly imperfect, with some irritating five-page-long digressions and pretentious allusions. It could have done with a much stricter editor; but for alerting us again to the huge and on-going danger to democracy represented by Rupert Murdoch, he must be thanked, and this book must be read.  book is a disappointment. He is by training an investigative journalist and might have produced a searing and salutary exposé of his subject. Instead he has penned a philosophical-cum-historical disquisition... Moreover the writing is clotted, the deviations are tedious and the index is a mess.
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Murdoch's father Keith became an Australian hero by attacking the "Establishment" with populist lies about the ill fated Gallipoli landings and his son follows in his footsteps, also posing as an outsider while attaching himself to any political group in power.
Page amply illustrates the fiction of editorial independence at News International and shows beyond dispute that the group has achieved it's dominance by trading populist press support for political favours.
I think that it helps to have a familiarity with Anglo/American/Australian politics and press history from the 1970's onwards, but if you do have this interest, then it's an extremely valuable reflection on the real life power plays, idealism, responsibilities, confusions and compromises of journalism - in fact the best that I've read. (