“Murdoch, the great manipulator of the media”, on Arte: a ruthless universe

ARTE – TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16 AT 8.50 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

It all started the year when, theoretically, everything should have ended, in 1995. At almost 65, the powerful media mogul Rupert Murdoch is looking for a successor, hesitating between his two boys, Lachlan or James, and his brilliant daughter Elisabeth. But rather than retire, the Australian owner of the Sun, of Times, of Wall Street Journal, from Fox News and hundreds of other media outlets around the world, will continue to make and break the powerful of this world, from Tony Blair in the UK to Donald Trump in the US.

It is this late part of the incredible history of the Murdoch Empire that the three documentaries – The Chosen One, The Fall and The return -, co-produced by the BBC, retrace here. Family, sex, threats, political blackmail, the case of wiretapping News of the World… The saga has an air of fiction, so much the reality sometimes exceeds the imagination.

The chosen one opens on the paradisiacal setting of the tropical island of Hayman, in Australia, owned by Rupert Murdoch, where, surrounded by his children, he receives the influential personalities of the moment. One of the strengths of this documentary series directed by Jamie Roberts is having obtained the testimonies of leading actors to comment on the archival footage, such as that of Les Hinton, right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch, who worked on his sides for over fifty years.

Family tree

We also hear politicians, like the Eurosceptic nationalist Nigel Farage, Alastair Campbell, the former strategist of Tony Blair, or Steve Bannon, former president of the conspiratorial media Breitbart News. We also meet the comedian Hugh Grant, Max Mosley, boss of world F1 (1993-2009) or even tabloid editors (Andrew Neil for the Sunday Times, Piers Morgan of News of the World) and several journalists.

A family tree starting from Rupert Murdoch and his three children grows over the course of the documentary and allows us to visualize the “links” woven between the political and media spheres, and to understand how the Murdoch family was able to build an empire of this size bypassing anti-monopoly laws. And to assert his interests until the highest summit of the state: when John Major (Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997) threatened to dismantle News Corp, one of the companies of the empire, Murdoch will weigh in favor of the election of his opponent Tony Blair.

The early 2000s marked the height of tabloid impunity. Until the “tapping matter” of the News of the World, in 2002, detailed in The fall, notably by investigative journalist Nick Davies, who looks back here on his years of investigating the subject.

In 2011, Rupert Murdoch is 80 years old and his children have moved away from him. Rejected by the political class, he will take advantage of the rise of populism to renew alliances. First with Nigel Farage, a fervent supporter of Brexit, then with Donald Trump, who will ensure a relay on Fox News – the channel that ” does not just take the temperature of the country, but makes it go up “, explains Jane Mayer, journalist at New Yorker. The following years, detailed in the third part (The return), will show that he was right to believe it.