A Disdain for Respectability

By Thomas Griffith

In America, where monopoly ownership has made many newspapers fair, bland and unadventuresome, Rupert Murdoch, the invading Australian press lord, set out to buck the trend. He bought the liberal tabloid New York Post and turned it into a paper conservative and vindictive in its politics and sensational in its news coverage. Many of his fellow editors and publishers consider him an embarrassment to their craft and a barracuda as well; the lack of respect is mutual ("Most American papers," says Murdoch, "do a few outstanding things, then coast"). Suddenly, however, Murdoch's bold reinvention of cynical, rowdy journalism is in jeopardy.

If Murdoch's New York Post is an endangered species, the fault is his own, with a little help from Senator Ted Kennedy. The ambitious Murdoch has been buying up television stations, hoping to create a fourth network to compete against CBS, NBC and ABC. He became an American citizen to qualify for ownership, but he knows that by FCC rule he cannot own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city, as he does in Boston and New York.

The FCC has not always been particularly zealous in enforcing this proviso, so Murdoch presumably expected the Government to continue to bend the rules in his favor. But the liberal Kennedy (often referred to in Murdoch's Boston Herald as "the Fat Boy") sneaked a clause requiring Murdoch to sell either station or paper into a long congressional appropriations bill. President Reagan seems to have skipped reading the clause when signing the bill into law. In Boston Murdoch chose to sell the station and keep the paper, where he can continue to taunt Teddy. But in New York City he needs the station as flagship of his new television network, so he must sell or close the Post. Bidders might covet the Post's real estate, but who other than Murdoch wants to run a paper that loses from $10 million to $17 million a year?

Most American editors think Murdoch a throwback to journalism's bad old ways and argue that he can get circulation but can't get advertising. Murdoch counters that monopoly papers lack "writing flavor or character" and are complacently boring, which is why newspaper readership is declining. He thinks his own journalism is as new-fashioned as local television news, which in its more competitive world often emphasizes murders, fires and rapes. Murdoch, who knows all the tricks for skewering people, also admires CBS's 60 Minutes, which he once described as "sensational and unfair" in its methods, much like his own brand of journalism.

Murdoch arrived in New York by way of London, already schooled in scandal. In Britain he owns the backstairs-gossip weekly News of the World, with the largest circulation of any English-language paper in the world, and the lurid London Sun, which pictures a topless young woman on Page 3 every day. After snubbing Murdoch for years, the British establishment seven years ago had to send for him to keep one of its most prestigious papers, the Times of London, from going under. At some cost to its independence, character and authority, he succeeded. He did so by overcoming Britain's tyrannical printing unions, thereby earning the gratitude of all his fellow national newspaper proprietors, though he is still no favorite of British journalists.

Murdoch loves success but disdains mere respectability. Having grown up in Australia's rough-and-tumble journalism, he feels more at home editing a "knockabout" paper (his description) like the New York Post. A canny student of popular prejudices, he plays to resentments and, like press barons of old, prides himself on an intuitive understanding of mass taste. He doesn't aspire to educate or elevate the public, being content to entertain and satisfy it.

Perhaps in television he sees an opportunity to do so more profitably. Why has he been willing to accept the Post's heavy losses all these years? "For a position of influence," Murdoch said last week. Pause. "I hope for good." He acknowledges that he had long banked on being able to drive out the larger rival Daily News, which seems unlikely. Now he accepts that "you might get the Post scratchily in the black but never rich on it." Mid-March is his deadline to sell or fold the Post, unless he can get the Government order reversed. What are his chances? A tough and crafty gambler who loves a fight, Murdoch guesses, "Less than even in Congress. Better than even in the courts."