Recent U.K. phone-hacking revelations have made the Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch a symbol of all that is wrong with U.K. tabloid media — scoop mania, rampant political bias, sex, sensationalism and trivia. But it was not always like that. The Rupert Murdoch whom I knew many years ago was a man willing to sacrifice much for the sake of media integrity and principles. His climb down into the media gutters came later.
I first came across Murdoch in Canberra in the mid-'60s. He had a visionary zeal to create a progressive daily newspaper for nation the size of the United States and a population then of only 7 million. And this was in the pre-electronic era when even fax machines did not exist.
He should have been doomed from the start. To maintain the national image, editorial pages had to be prepared in the national capital Canberra, then flown to Sydney daily for printing, with a mad four-hour car dash needed whenever Canberra airport was fogbound, which was often.