Media moguls and the democratic loopholes they exploit

Australian editor and media boss Eric Beecher.
photo: supply

The enormous power wielded by media moguls is a hole in our democracy, an Australian editor and media boss says.

Eric Beecher saw this firsthand when he was hired by Rupert Murdoch as editor of his Melbourne newspaper The Herald.

Years later, Beecher is now oops, Sued for libel by Lachlan Murdoch – who eventually dropped the case.

His book is The men who killed the news: The inside story of how media moguls abuse power, manipulate truth, and distort democracy.

The first thing he noticed was what he called Murdoch’s “power presence.”

“I remember one time he came back for a federal election in Australia and the prime minister at the time was Bob Hawke, a famous Australian prime minister.

“Despite their different political views, Murdoch and Hawke have always had a good relationship.”

Hawke, he said, had been calling Murdoch.

“Murdoch didn’t answer the phone and Rupert said to me ‘Do I really need to speak to Hawke?'”

He told RNZ the division of power between editorial and commercial was sometimes blurry. 9 a.m. to noon.

“One morning my phone rang and it was Ken Cowley, the managing director of News Corp Australia. He had just received my newspaper from the previous day… and he started shouting at me, which was very unusual. He’s usually very calm and collected.”

He said there was an international report on the plane crash on the front page.

“A jumbo jet crashed in Taiwan, killing 200 people. This is a news story. This is breaking news in our time zone.

“News Corp owns half of Ansett, the domestic airline in Australia, and he shouted at me ‘don’t you know we don’t put a plane crash on the front page? We own half of the airline’.”

The book examines what he calls “the shadow of power” through history.

“The shadow of power exists where you can’t see it. It’s especially invisible to the public, but it’s very visible in our democracy and I think sometimes poses a real danger to our democracy.”

Beecher said the all-powerful media mogul was not a newcomer and that these people had exploited “the loopholes in democracy.”

“Most European democracies have press freedom protections enshrined in their constitutions. New Zealand, Australia and the UK are less explicit, but they all have it, so I call them protected democracies.

“Yet, on the other hand, the owners of these media have essentially no ethical, moral or social responsibility to act the way owners or practitioners of law, medicine or other professions would — none at all, except to self-regulate.”

Now, he said, a new and distinct type of media owner holds greater power.

“What Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have in common is that they don’t hire journalists, they don’t hire editors, they don’t create their own content.

“They are platforms and conduits for other people’s content, which means the volume of content is incredible and largely uncontrolled.”

He believes that there is a model for independent private media, but it will occupy a certain space.

“The New York TimesControlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family for about a century, it is a model of profitable, ethical journalism.

“It doesn’t make nearly as much money as Fox News, but it has found the right model for digital news.”